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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29040156">Sabor a Mi</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoneJanggles/pseuds/BoneJanggles'>BoneJanggles</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Praise Kink, canon compiant technically, canon is broken it is TOO SMALL, fluff with minimal plot, i will superglue the canon back to its BIG SIZE, i will take a hammer and fix the canon, yes i did invent a personality for her based on a wild mismash of my own relatives</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:22:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>31,894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29040156</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoneJanggles/pseuds/BoneJanggles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A few months after the events of Casablanca, Carmen is living with her mother and thinks getting everything you wanted isn't all it's cracked up to be.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gray | Crackle/Carmen Sandiego | Black Sheep, Ivy &amp; Carmen Sandiego | Black Sheep &amp; Zack</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>295</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Well this idea wouldn't leave me alone so here it is in all it's disgusting mushy fluffy glory. This was originally going to be one of those gigantic one-shots but then it was getting to be a bit too big so I chopped it in half and made two chapters instead.</p><p>Glossary in the end notes</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Carmen is glad, in retrospect, that she had the experience of getting to know Shadowsan after they both left VILE. Learning who he was on his terms, both of them slowly revealing their true selves after years of only knowing a single facet had been a strange experience. But it wasn’t dissimilar to what she was doing now.</p><p>In many ways, Carlotta Valdez is still a mystery to her. Carmen hadn’t realized quite how many fantasies she’d come to hold about her mother until she would see her doing something and feel a brief yet deep confusion. A sense of wrongness that made no sense considering, for all intents and purposes, she’d never met the woman.</p><p>Carlotta isn’t a very good cook though she always tried new recipes when she found them. There are a few simple dishes she said she’d learned from her mother, but she often goes to local cafes and restaurants where she is greeted fondly by the staff rather than cook for herself.</p><p>She loves old bolero music from the ‘50s and plays her CDs every evening for the children in her care. The older kids would whine about how uncool it was, but the more they complained, the stronger her mother’s efforts would be to make them dance with her.</p><p>She runs a tight ship at the orphanage, managing all the expenses and accounts and paperwork by herself with the confidence of a CEO in a high rise office. She has a few employees and she doesn’t take nonsense from anyone. The children learn their manners and their basic schooling with the same firm guiding hand. Carmen watches with interest, wondering if that was the way she would have been raised if not for the interference of VILE and ACME.</p><p>Carlotta is often quiet though it doesn’t seem to be her nature. When she’s excited she laughs loudly and is prone to physical affection; swinging the children’s hands as they walk, bumping shoulders with her neighbors, mindlessly patting Carmen’s head as she passes or giving her a gentle poke and a whispered “sientate” when Carmen slumped over in her seat. She couldn’t seem to ever get enough reassurance that Carmen was real and was there with her now. And Carmen felt the same.</p><p>But other times she would be silent, nearly sullen. Lost in the glint of a fine golden pen in the sunlight or a glimpse of a happy family together in the city.</p><p>Carmen knew she was thinking of her father in those moments. Knew her mother felt guilty for wishing she had more when her daughter had seemingly come back from the dead to be with her, but couldn’t help falling into the familiar ruts of sorrow and loss she had developed over the 20 years that her family had been gone.</p><p>That was something Carmen understood very well.</p><p>She didn’t live with her mother, though Carlotta had offered. She thought it would be better for both of them to have some distance at least initially. She’s sure as much as her mother surprises her, she probably isn’t exactly what Carlotta had imagined for her little baby.</p><p>Carmen hopes they can live together one day though.</p><p>She had instead gotten a small apartment close by, using the stipend she received from ACME now that her heist and hacking days were over. As long as she kept catching rogue VILE operatives, they’re happy to have her on the payroll.</p><p>The apartment seems minuscule after the old warehouse, and she hasn’t done much decorating beyond buying way too many houseplants. What does one put in a permanent house, anyway? A dining table, a few different types of chairs in the living room, a dish set so at least her cups all match. She wishes she had more pictures to put up. In her line of work a selfie could get you arrested so all she has are a few candids of her friends and an absurd picture of Player he’d edited to look like an 1980s yearbook portrait. That one was her favorite though he’d had to explain what yearbooks were when he’d sent it over.</p><p>Once a week Carmen video-chats with Hideo and Shadowsan, or, Suhara, now, she supposes…</p><p>He never explicitly asked her to call him that but she can tell he would prefer to leave his old moniker behind. There’s no place for Shadowsan in the house they share, though Hideo says she’s always welcome to visit him and Suhara in Matsumoto City. Carmen is sure she’ll take them up on that offer one day. Hideo seems to like her with the same exasperated fondness that he has for his brother. She keeps meaning to ask for a photo of the two of them.</p><p>She keeps tabs on Zack and Ivy via the constant stream of emails and phone calls with Julia, who stayed with ACME mostly as a historical consultant, and occasionally she gets an update of their accomplishments from Chief.</p><p>She chats with Player every day.</p><p>Her life is full, she thinks. She has everything she wanted, everything she worked towards for all those years. She should be happy.</p><p>She puts her mother’s Trio Los Panchos CDs on as soon as she gets home every day to fend off the silence in her apartment. </p><p>She has nightmares about Gray almost every night. </p><p>In some of them she kills him. She throws him from the Eiffel tower in Paris, she runs him through with a sword in Nagano, she drowns him as they swim off the coast of Ecuador. Everything but the truth yet he still ends up dead by her hand.</p><p>In other dreams he doesn’t break her from VILE’s hold on her mind. He’s there as she kicks Zack out of the ferris wheel but this time no one saves him. He’s there as she hurts Julia and steals the eye of Vishnu. He’s there as she takes and takes and takes, never stopping her, never saying anything. In these dreams she feels nothing towards him except a vague distrust. She has the sense that she must work with him but she’s always watching for him to betray her.</p><p>It makes her sick to remember those ones. </p><p>Shortly after she’d regained her memories, she asked Chief how he was doing. ACME had taken him to a hospital while she was allowed to leave with Shadowsan. Chief had told her he was fine, expected to make a full recovery, but that he had asked that they not stay in contact. Neither ACME nor Carmen.</p><p>Chief had said, as her hologram flickered in the warehouse’s dim lighting, that he wished them the best.</p><p>Carmen understands. She hates it but she knows why he felt he couldn’t stay. She was only a reminder of the worst parts of his life. She’d lied to him when he didn’t know who she was, she’d turned on him when he tried to help her. She was the reason VILE had meddled around in his mind. She had wanted to kill him, genuinely, and had made that clear to him.</p><p>All that is obvious to her, logical even, but her chest feels like it’s caving in when she thinks about how much he must hate her. She misses him. She wants to find him. But she doesn’t want to hurt him any more than she already has.</p><p>And when it’s late at night, and she’s lying awake beneath an open window because despite the danger the quiet is too heavy in her empty apartment, she thinks maybe she did kill him after all.</p><p>She doesn’t think it’s impossible that Chief would lie to her about him if she thought knowing the truth would set Carmen off. She doesn’t even think it’s improbable. It’s less likely that Shadowsan would have gone along with it, but he hadn’t had much to say on the subject either and her mental state had been so fragile then...like a porcelain vase set on the edge of a table. Waiting to fall with the slightest nudge. It would have seemed kinder to spare her the knowledge.</p><p>Carmen remembers every detail of those last moments. And she feels, now, the horror behind her actions but when she thinks back to it there’s no emotion connected to the physical memory except some vague satisfaction. It’s like watching someone else do it.  She remembers the creak of soft leather as she pulled off her gloves. She remembers the cool sensor under her finger as she’d registered her thumbprint on the crackle rod. She remembers turning the dial up far beyond a lethal voltage, feeling the power thrumming through the handle. She remembers bracing against the kickback as she released the energy into his chest.</p><p>She thinks about how his flesh would have burned and blistered, how his heart would have spasmed and then stopped. In his final seconds of consciousness he would have seen her - the person he had risked everything for, the person he tried desperately to save - smirking down at him in triumph. </p><p>How could anyone survive that. How could anyone want to.</p><p>So no, she doesn’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that Chief would make up a story that went along with the guilt Carmen was already feeling. One that she knew Carmen wouldn’t dig into.</p><p>And it’s true, Carmen doesn’t want to look into it. Doesn’t want Player to look into it or Julia or Suhara. </p><p>Because what if she had killed him?</p><p>Or, god, what if she hadn’t?</p><p>Would she really be okay after knowing for certain that he was living just fine without her? It’s not like she wants him to suffer the way she is suffering, but she can’t imagine a world where either of them is happy without the other.</p><p>~</p><p>Carlotta suggests they take a trip to a local park. Just the two of them this time, no children to chaperone. Carmen is happy to oblige and even packs a picnic, stopping at a cafe to pick up empanadas and the little sweet croissants she knows her mother likes. They sit at a bench and watch the other people at the park, chatting happily for nearly two hours. </p><p>But as the shadows lengthen, the melancholy begins to creep up on her again. Her dream the previous night had been especially bad and when she sees a child push their friend off of the playground across the lawn she feels herself freeze up.</p><p>“Mija, what is it that has you so on edge all the time?”</p><p>Her mother’s voice surprises her out of a dark spiral of thoughts and memories. Carmen is about to wave it off as a side effect of living as a super thief her whole life, but at the last minute decides against it.</p><p>“I...lost a friend recently. We used to be really close but now he says he doesn’t want me in his life at all. I guess it’s been difficult to move on from that.”</p><p>Her mother hums thoughtfully, “You know, your father tried to pull that act once. We had been seeing each other casually but as soon as I wanted to get more serious, he cut me off saying I would be safer if we didn’t get any more involved. Obviously that didn’t stick.”</p><p>She ruffles her daughter’s hair and Carmen laughs as she goes to straighten it.</p><p>Once her hair is combed back to an acceptable level of unruly, she sighs and her arms flop back into her lap. “It’s funny, my dad said that to you, I said it to Gray once, and now he’s saying it back to me. He didn’t even give me a reason why. He just said he wished me the best and then, nothing.”</p><p>Her mother offers her the tea they’d been sharing. “You should try to find out why, then. If he just got tired of you then you can - and should - leave him in the dust, but if he left because of some misplaced heroism like your father? Well...it’s a noble impulse, to save the other person while you suffer alone. But it’s not just you suffering, is it? When you told this Gray that you couldn’t see him anymore, did that stop you from wanting to? And now that he’s the one saying it, don’t you feel lost? And left behind?”</p><p>Carmen frowns and holds the warm thermos close to her chest. Her mother is right to a certain extent but there is so much of the situation that she doesn’t know, that Carmen doesn’t ever want her to know. How could she possibly explain what they were to each other? Would her mother understand both the betrayal and the relief of having him by her side while she’d been brainwashed into the worst version of herself? Was Carmen capable of explaining the hollowness inside of her as she killed him, and the fear that maybe she hadn’t?</p><p>Carmen looks back at the playground where the children are playing as if nothing happened. Tears prickle in her eyes. “Mama I, I really hurt him. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”</p><p>It’s the closest she can get to admitting the truth.</p><p>Carlotta’s arm reaches around and pulls her close, knocking the empty picnic basket to the ground. “Nena, nena,” She soothes, her other hand pushes Carmen’s hair out of her face, “at least start with that then. For your own sanity, and for mine.”</p><p>Carmen nods. She lets herself be held by her mother the way she always wished for as a child. </p><p>Could it really be so simple? It would be better to know, wouldn’t it? Rather than any more of this horrible teetering between guilt and grief.</p><p>They stay like that for a little while, until Carmen sniffs wetly and pulls out of the embrace to blink back her tears.</p><p>“I probably seem very young and stupid, don’t I?” she asks, laughing through her embarrassment at such an easy solution to the problem that had plagued her for almost two months now. </p><p>Her mother smiles, “Young? Yes. Stupid? Never. These things are just a part of growing up, trust me, I had the same thoughts when your father broke it off with me. I’m just glad I’m still able to offer advice even though we lost so much time.”</p><p>Carmen gets up to retrieve the basket. “I’m sure I’ll always need your-”</p><p>She’s cut off as two individuals in suits burst out of the bushes behind her and tackle her to the ground. One of them gets her in a chokehold while the other wraps his arms tightly around her legs.</p><p>“Carmen!” Her mother jumps up and starts towards them. Carmen squirms, grappling with the arm around her neck until she hears the voice above her head.</p><p>“WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING JUST LEAVING US IN THE LURCH LIKE THAT HUH?! YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST RUN AWAY TO ARGENTINA AND WE WON’T FIND YOU?! YOU THINK WE DIDN’T LEARN ANYTHING FROM WORKING WITH YOU?! YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING!”</p><p>Carmen stops fighting and looks up, recognizing Ivy’s red hair snarling face. She looks down to see Zack angrily pouting up at her from where he’s pressed his head into her knees.</p><p>“Carmen are you okay? Who are these people?!” Her mother has her cell phone out and looks like she’s torn between calling the police and jumping into the fight herself.</p><p>“It’s okay Mama, these are my friends I promise.” Carmen tries to look reassuring from her awkward position on the ground. </p><p>“WHO DOES THAT?! WHO JUST WRITES A NOTE AND THEN DISAPPEARS?! AS IF WE WEREN’T GONNA LOOK FOR YOU! ARE YOU CRAZY!?”</p><p>“Wait is that really your mom?” Zack belatedly registers Carmen’s words.</p><p>He lets go of her legs immediately and walks over to introduce himself. Carmen takes the opportunity to bring her feet under her and bears down on her toes. She grabs the bottom edge of Ivy’s coat and flips over her head, breaking the hold and tangling her friend in her own suit jacket. She makes it to the picnic basket this time, and rejoins her mother at the bench while Ivy fights her way out of her coat.</p><p>“ZACK YOU CHOWDERHEAD YOU HAD ONE JOB!”</p><p>Carmen and Zack ignore her. Carlotta distrustfully shakes the redhead’s proffered hand.</p><p>Zack babbles cheerfully, “Sorry about the weird introduction there. We really are Carmen’s old teammates! I’m sure she’s told you about us, the daring duo of getaway drivers? The fearsome twosome who always saves the day? I’m Zack, the smart, handsome one. That’s Ivy, the brainless muscle.”</p><p>Ivy pulls herself up off the grass and joins them. She still looks angry though she doesn’t make any more movements towards Carmen. “Speak for yourself, idiot.”</p><p>She looks to Carmen’s mother. “Hey. I’m Ivy, like he said. I’m the real smart one.”</p><p>She doesn’t offer her hand.</p><p>Carlotta grabs Carmen’s wrist and pulls her slightly behind her. “Right, the one who’s always hungry and the one who likes punching things.”</p><p>Zack looks at Carmen, aghast, “That can’t be all you said about us!”</p><p>Carmen laughs, resting her chin on her mother’s shoulder and allowing herself to be protected, “Of course not, I did your legacy proud. It’s you two who have gotten off on the wrong foot here.”</p><p>She looks around and takes in the concerned looks of the other park-goers. From where she stands now, she can see Agent Zari standing among the trees near the parking lot. She looks unimpressed, but then, Carmen thinks, she always looks like that. </p><p>Carmen slips her arm out of her mother’s hand as she walks around to go behind her old teammates. “Why don’t we talk more at my apartment? I think if we stay here much longer we’re going to have the cops called on us.”</p><p>She wants to put her arms around the siblings as she would have before. But she can still feel the anger coming off of Ivy in waves, and even Zack seems like he wouldn’t be too ecstatic about the idea. Carmen knows she’s the one who left them, but their rejection still hurts.</p><p>She shepherds them along without touching them. Her mother falls back to walk behind her and keep an eye on these troublesome new kids.</p><p>They reach the parking lot just in time to see Agent Zari driving away in the standard ACME issue black sedan.</p><p>Ivy steams silently while Zack watches the white haired woman take off down the road without a backwards glance. He turns to his sister, “You think she had business somewhere else? She didn’t say anything about it on the way here.”</p><p>“She didn’t say anything at all on the way here.” Ivy grinds out.</p><p>“Yeah. Well, do you think it would be ACME sanctioned to steal a different car then? Since Zari took our ride and all.”</p><p>Carmen interrupts before anyone can hear whatever argument is about to ensue, “How about we just take my mom’s car instead? We can drop you guys off back here when we’re done if you like.”</p><p>Ivy shoots her a grumpy look. “Fine. But who knows what that woman’s doing. We’d be better off calling HQ from your place than waiting around for her to come back.”</p><p>The statement feels very targeted despite its agreeable sounding nature. Carmen tries not to think too much about it while they’re still in public.</p><p>~</p><p>Carmen and Zack sit at her small dining table. She had hurried to pull a few extra chairs out of the closet but her mother immediately went to the kitchen to make coffee and Ivy apparently decided that pacing the length of the room was preferable to sitting.</p><p>Carmen tries to not fidget too much while she waits for one of the siblings to speak. Zack finally pulls himself away from admiring her picture of Player long enough to start.</p><p>“You know, Ivy was convinced you guys had been kidnapped or something. You and Shadowsan both.”</p><p>“Shut up Bro! I was not!” Ivy barely restrains herself from smacking her brother upside the head. Carlotta pretends not to watch from the attached kitchen.</p><p>“She totally was. Wouldn’t even listen when Chief said you were fine because she thought it was some deep cover trouble or something.”</p><p>“ZACK!”</p><p>Carmen doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or cry. She definitely wants to hug her friend but she thinks that would be a really good way to get a fist to the face right now.</p><p>Zack is laughing, though, always happy to embarrass his big sister. “It wasn’t until Chief called Julia who called Player who called us that she accepted it at all. Then she was just wicked angry.”</p><p>Ivy looks like she wants to strangle him, face red enough to give her hair a run for its money. “Well, could you blame me?! That was suspect as hell! We come back from a drive and you two are just gone, with only a note on the wall? A note can easily be faked! I could do it right now!”</p><p>Carlotta comes back to the table with Carmen’s stove-top espresso maker. “Mija did you really disappear with only a note left behind?” She makes a disapproving tsk sound while pouring mugs of coffee for each of them, “To think my daughter would have such poor manners.”</p><p>Carmen wishes she could melt into the floor. It’s only years of Countess Cleo’s etiquette lessons that keeps her upright. She is ashamed, of both her actions and of her instinct to fall back on VILE rather than her mother’s steady example or even Suhara’s quiet strength</p><p>She grips her mug tightly and sips the searing, bitter drink without meeting anyone's eye. It’s not the way she usually takes her coffee, and while her mother brought cream and sugar to the table she thinks - stupidly, irrationally - if she lets go of the mug for any reason that she will fall apart and she will not be able to put herself back together.</p><p>It takes her a few moments to compose a thought out of her hurricane of emotions.</p><p>“I’m sorry I made you worry.” She begins slowly, watching the reflection of the window shake in the ripples of black coffee. “I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye the way I should have, the way you deserved. The only reason I left so suddenly was because I knew if I stayed any longer, or if I tried to say it to your face, I would have never left at all.”</p><p>“Then don’t leave!” Ivy burst out, stopping her pacing, “Why did you have to go in the first place?! Was living with us really so bad?”</p><p>“No! I loved living with you two! And I miss it every day! I just thought that if I stayed, you would have followed me forever. I wanted you to find your own path!”</p><p>Zack pipes in, “What, so you just said ‘heck with it’ and threw us in the deep end? We would have got there eventually! It’s not like we ended up going very far anyway, you know, career-wise.”</p><p>Carmen huffs out a breath of laughter that’s half panic and half stress. She takes another sip of coffee that burns her lips.</p><p>Zack continues, “And anyway, we didn’t follow you just because we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We followed you because we believed in your work, Carm. If we didn’t, we would have ditched you for the racing circuit years ago.”</p><p>The plain honesty of the statement makes Carmen’s hold on the mug loosen but she still doesn’t let go. “I guess I just thought we all needed something drastic to get us moving. I didn’t want you to be like me, realizing after sixteen years that what I was doing wasn’t right.”</p><p>Her mother finally sits down next to her. “That’s your father talking again, sweetheart. He was always one for grand gestures. It’s a beautiful thing to have such close friends to begin with, wouldn’t you rather watch them grow from next to them? Instead of from far away in the shadows?” </p><p>Carlotta gestures to a picture of Zack and Ivy’s ‘suiting ceremony’ that Julia had snapped from the audience. They weren’t even looking at the camera. Carmen had hung it on the wall regardless.</p><p>Ivy reaches over the table, gently working Carmen’s hand off of the coffee mug so she can hold it. Zack gives her puppy-eyes until she gives him her other hand to hold. She notices that their hands aren’t any softer now, even with their cushy corporate job, and wonders how many ACME vehicles they secretly soup up. Carmen doubts Chief would give the okay for two formerly criminal rookies to go poking around inside her fancy cars, but doubts even more that the older woman could stop them.</p><p>“Look boss,” Ivy stops to clear her throat, more embarrassed now than angry, “for all three of us, people have been leaving our whole lives. Whether or not it was on purpose, we all ended up alone. But then we found each other, right? So we should know better than anyone that when you find something good you hold on to it. People like us, we gotta stick together or else we’ll be alone again! And there’s nothing worse than that!”</p><p>Carmen doesn’t hold back this time, standing up abruptly to go around the table and wrap her arms around her friends. She suddenly wishes she had done this more when they had lived and worked together, wishes she had held them and listened to them and stayed with them even when every cell in her body had screamed for justice.</p><p>They’d had so much time to spend with each other before, and they had squandered it saving the world instead.</p><p>She laughs as they revel in their embrace, limbs tangling around one another, and laughs harder when her mother joins in. Ivy is crushed against her left side while Zack reaches as far as he can from her right and holds them all together.</p><p>As their laughter dies down Carmen has another thought, “If you all don’t mind staying until this evening, we could call Suhara and get a proper family reunion going.”</p><p>Zack looks down from where he’s leaned against the top of her head. “Who the hell is Suhara?”</p><p>~</p><p>A month later and Carmen is on a rooftop on the outskirts of downtown Perth, Australia. It’s across the continent from Sydney, and she hopes Gray didn’t move all the way just to escape the few moments they’d shared in the harbor city.</p><p>But maybe she’s getting ahead of herself. </p><p>Maybe he doesn’t think about her even that much anymore.</p><p>Her lookout is across the street from a small theater company. It had almost exclusively good reviews of it’s shows and the website had said the usual stuff about the cast and crew all being one big happy family dedicated to their craft. She’d skimmed most of it, looking for a specific name in their archived blog updates. No variation of Graham Calloway had come up in the search results, but there had been a short update three months ago about a new chief electrician who had previously worked at the Sydney Opera House. </p><p>It fits her timeline, and she tracked Gray’s general location to an apartment complex nearby. </p><p>She doesn’t need to actually see him, she thinks. Isn’t it enough to know that he’s alive at all? Shouldn’t she respect his wishes to be left alone? Wouldn’t it be better, after all, if he’d moved on from the nightmare they’d shared? If he’d found a way to forget, to move forward without her, couldn’t she simply let it be?</p><p>But she can’t stand the thought that the last time she’d seen him was when she tried to kill him. His frightened eyes and pained grimace, washed sickly green in the light of the lethal electricity, is seared into her mind.</p><p>Carmen has to see him again. She has to see with her own eyes that he’s living and breathing and not motionless on the floor as he is in her memories.</p><p>So she perches on the roof of some legal firm and she waits for the last show of the day to be let out. She thinks it would have been a good spot to watch the sunset but the sky had been heavy with rain clouds all day. As inconvenient as it would be, she wishes it would just rain already to get the anticipation over with.</p><p>It’s nearly 9pm by the time the first guests start leaving.</p><p>Another hour and she spots two stage-hands leave through a side exit and head around back to the staff parking lot. From where she sits, she can tell neither are Gray, but she can’t quite see their faces from this far away.</p><p>She makes a sudden change of plans and slips down the side of the building.</p><p>There’s a small alleyway that connects perpendicular to the side walkway that the crew uses. It runs behind a few buildings on that block, connecting to another parallel street farther up the road, and seems to mainly be used for garbage pick-up. It hadn’t been labeled on her map but she’d taken note of it while scouting that morning before the theater opened.</p><p>Carmen makes her way there now, hurrying to the nearest crosswalk and then back. While normally she wouldn’t think twice about jaywalking, this is a fairly busy street and she doesn't want to take any chances with the local law enforcement today. </p><p>She isn’t wearing her trademark hat and coat, and the number of people searching for her has significantly dropped recently, but paranoia is a hard habit to break. It’s more routine than worry that has her stepping into a large crowd of theater-goers as she crosses the street, looking for a comforting anonymity in the colorful jumble of people. She ducks into the alley a few buildings up and makes her way back to the theater, praying she didn’t miss Gray leaving.</p><p>The cast and crew spill out the door and into the night, their voices blurring into a background hum as Carmen keeps watching for a familiar face. She doesn’t know how many people work backstage with him, isn’t even 100 percent sure he works here himself, but she gets more and more anxious the longer she doesn’t see him.</p><p>The flow of people slows to a trickle, then stops after about 15 minutes. She steps out from behind the dumpster she’d been hidden behind, debating if it would be worth it to break in and try to look for him or if she should just come back another day and wait again.</p><p>What was that thing her mother had said about the definition of insanity?</p><p>She takes a step forward, the tip of her shoe just leaving the darkness of the alleyway when she hears a voice from behind her.</p><p>“Looking for someone in particular?”</p><p>Carmen spins, startled. </p><p>It’s Gray, casually standing in the dirty alleyway with her as if he'd been there the whole time. He’s close enough that if she reached out her arms, her fingertips would barely brush against his shirt. She thinks the distance of an entire hemisphere is nothing compared to this few feet of cool, damp air.</p><p>She hadn’t meant to get so close, hadn’t meant to interact in any way, only to see him walk past and then go. But now that he’s here she drinks in the sight.</p><p>He’s wearing a light jacket over a plain shirt. His jeans are cuffed at the bottom as always, but now they have a few dusty patches around his knees, his shoes are similarly scuffed. One hand holds the strap of a thin backpack and she can see black grease stains on his wrist where it pokes out of the jacket sleeve.</p><p>He looks tired. Apprehensive.</p><p>He doesn’t say anything else.</p><p>Carmen realizes she’s just been staring at him in shock and she rushes to fill the silence. </p><p>“I’m sorry for stalking you like this, I didn’t- what I meant to do was just see if you were okay. You know, after everything. Chief said you would make a full recovery but that you didn’t want to stay in contact with us and I completely understand, I do, I just wanted to make sure that was the truth I guess. I had to see if you were okay.”</p><p>Gray still doesn’t respond. If anything he looks a bit stricken at her words.</p><p>God, what was she thinking? This was a terrible idea, she should have stayed on the rooftop. She never should have tracked him down at all. It was the only thing he’d asked of her, and here she was flaunting her own selfish desires. What was it about her that just couldn’t leave well enough alone?</p><p>His form blurs as tears fill her eyes. She wants to get closer but she keeps talking instead. “I’ll leave soon, I promise. I just...never mind. It doesn’t matter. I totally get it if you never want to see me again. If you’re...afraid of me or-or you hate me and-”</p><p>Gray steps forward and Carmen’s jaw snaps shut. She watches him come in close and raise his hands to her face. He pauses just before his fingers make contact, giving her time to step back if she wants to.</p><p>She doesn’t.</p><p>One hand cradles her cheek while the other gently wipes away the few tears that escaped. Carmen leans into the touch with a soft sigh. Her hands flutter around his wrists, overwhelmed and unsure if she should hold on. She settles on softly hooking her fingers around them, giving him an easy way out as well.</p><p>His pulse beats under her fingertips. Warm, steady, alive.</p><p>Gray tightens his hold by a tiny fraction. Her eyes flick up to his for a second as he pulls her closer, nuzzling into the top of her head in something so close to a kiss it makes her heart ache.</p><p>She feels the heat of his breath as he murmurs into her hair, “I could never hate you, Carmen. I would never, ever, send you away.”</p><p>The words are a punch to the chest and a lullaby all at once. Carmen feels the last brittle part of her break, like a single thread holding up a ruined house, and she collapses into him. Her arms wind beneath his jacket and around his chest, her face digs into his shoulder as a sob tears loose from her chest.</p><p>“I thought I killed you!”</p><p>She feels his breath pause beneath her hands, then resume. Gray’s hands had slipped from her face when she moved, and now he wraps his arms tightly around her shoulders. Somehow pulling her closer still. “I thought Chief told you-?”</p><p>Carmen shakes her head, burrowing further into the crook of his neck. “I thought she was lying.” Her voice is thick and it’s difficult to get the words out, “It’s hard to know what’s real from back then.”</p><p>One of Gray’s hands moves to the nape of her neck, his thumb slowly stroking the skin at the base of her scalp. She can feel that he is speaking where his cheek is pressed to her temple but she can’t make out the words over her own crying.</p><p>She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, entwined and grieving in the shadows. Long enough that she runs out of tears and a headache blooms hot behind her eyes. But Gray seems content to stay as long as she is holding him, so they remain even then. Once she calms down she realizes he’d only been saying “It’s okay. It’s okay.” over and over as she’d sobbed into his shoulder.</p><p>They’re both quiet for a moment, then Gray clears his throat, “Not to hurry you along or anything, but maybe you’d like to pick this back up at my apartment? It, uh, kind of smells like garbage here.”</p><p>Carmen laughs weakly and pulls out of the embrace, finally realizing what a mess she’s made of his coat. She apologizes, trying to wipe her face with shaking hands.</p><p>“No worries, nothing a washing machine won’t fix.” He says, as he pulls a plain cotton handkerchief out of his pocket and offers it to her. It has a few grease stains on it as well, she thinks he probably uses it to wipe his hands after tinkering with something, and she tries to avoid those spots as she cleans off her face.</p><p>She must not do a very good job, though, because when she hands it back to him he smiles a little and swipes his thumb over her cheek.</p><p>She’s exhausted from her crying and he’s tired after a long day of work. But they’re both smiling now, which is more than she’d dared to dream of for months.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>sientate - sit up straight<br/>mija - conjunction of 'mi hija' or 'my daughter', term of endearment for younger girls<br/>nena - baby/little one, term of endearment for younger girls</p><p>Stay tuned next! For a segment I like to call: S I N</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Blegh. Okay. Now that this hallmark movie bullshit is out of my system I can finally go back to being a bad bitch.</p><p>Glossary in the end notes</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The drive is quiet, and a little awkward. As per usual, Carmen thinks, they’ve done things all out of order and now they have to chitchat even though she’s already completely broken down in front of him.</p><p>She asks about his new job, and the new city.</p><p>He tells her that mostly he’d just wanted a change of scenery. This theater is small and he has to do a lot of the electrical work and maintenance himself, rather than just sitting in a booth and pushing sliders on cue. But he likes the work even if the pay isn’t nearly as good. </p><p>He says he likes coming home tired rather than bored, and she sees his fingers tighten on the steering wheel.</p><p>She thinks she understands what he means.</p><p>She tells him about her mother, how she found her after all these years. What it’s like living with her now, as an adult.</p><p>She doesn’t talk about her father. He doesn’t ask.</p><p>His apartment is on the third floor but he says the elevator on his side of the building has been broken for a while. He’d offered to take a look at it but the landlord had apparently muttered something about insurance liability and just blocked it off instead.</p><p>They take the stairs, both glad for it. Years of training instinctively bucking against the idea of being locked in a small box they weren’t in full control of.</p><p>Gray opens the door for her without preamble, stopping to pull off his shoes at the entryway before squeezing past her. Carmen finds herself stock-still in the little hallway, taking in the living space before her that suddenly seems far too intimate for her to be seeing like this.</p><p>His apartment is small and clearly set up for a person living by themselves. The whole thing appears to be shaped like a sideways “T”, with the kitchen immediately to the right of the front door and the living room straight ahead with no walls between. In the middle of the two is a small dining area, and from the left of that there is a hallway she can’t see much of.</p><p>There’s two chairs at the dining table but one has a tool kit set on it, and half of the table is littered with notebooks and charge cords. There is a sofa and an armchair in the living room but only one half of the sofa has any signs of continual use. There’s a glass in the sink and a single plate on the drying rack.</p><p>There’s a window in his kitchen with a little plant pot under it. The dirt has been watered recently but there’s nothing growing. There’s a sliding glass door at the end of the living room that opens to a small metal balcony, a door on the wall next to her that is probably a broom closet, there’s some light shining from the hallway so there must be a window in one of the rooms-</p><p>“A bedroom and a bathroom down that way, window in the bedroom and vent in the bathroom, a linen closet at the end of the hall, there’s a ladder on the balcony that can be dropped down if needed, and a secret cupboard above the stove.” Gray finishes her inner monologue from where he leans against his kitchen counter, and taps his knuckles against the stove hood just over his head.</p><p>Carmen blushes, embarrassed to have been caught casing the place. Embarrassed that even now it’s still her first instinct upon entering any building. But Gray only laughs and she thinks of course, he must be the same way.</p><p>He drops his backpack onto the table. “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I’m covered in grease and the dust of a thousand Wizard of Oz performances so I’m gonna take a quick shower.” </p><p>He takes two steps down the hall and pivots to look at her again, pointing sternly, “If I come back and you’re gone, I swear I will find a way to call your weird hacker friend to get you put on the No-Fly list.”</p><p>Carmen doesn’t bother to say Player almost certainly wouldn’t listen to him, only raises her hands in mock surrender. “I’ll be here, I promise.”</p><p>He points again for dramatic effect before turning away and disappearing down the hall.</p><p>Once he’s gone the apartment is almost overwhelmingly empty and quiet. Carmen slips off her shoes and wanders further inside, shaking out her hair before pulling it back into a low bun. It’s not as secure as her usual style but she doesn’t expect she’ll be doing much parkour in the immediate future.</p><p>She peeks at one of the notebooks that’s been left open on the dining table. It’s mostly bullet points from a meeting he must have had recently; lots of stage cues and some comments on updating or fixing machinery. There’s nothing of real interest except for a few little doodles he’s added; Dorothy and Toto escape up the side margin while the Tin Man runs from the Wicked Witch along the bottom.</p><p>Carmen continues into the living room. The couch is pushed against the right wall so that it has a clear view of both the front door and the balcony. The armchair faces the glass door but is clearly rarely used. There’s a side table with a lamp in between the chairs and a low coffee table in front of them that has a few books and magazines stacked on it.</p><p>The books are all about mechanical engineering and she thinks they look pretty dull. </p><p>In fact, the whole place is surprisingly plain for a retired super thief, she thinks. But then, she isn’t sure what exactly she was expecting. </p><p>Carmen notes that the only thing he seems willing to splurge on is sturdy clothing, and she suspects that’s only because he doesn’t want to go shopping soon after buying anything. She doesn’t recognize the brand of boots near the door but she can tell they’re high quality. And so was his jacket, or it seemed to be so from when her face was pressed into it. </p><p>She sits carefully on the unused side of the couch, pulling her phone out of her pocket to shoot her mother a text. Buenos Aires is just short of twelve hours behind Western Australia so she isn’t surprised when she gets a quick reply.</p><p>“You were right, I just needed to talk to him about it.”<br/>
“Of course I was right!”</p><p>Her mother follows the message with several emojis, which Carmen has yet to get the hang of using. It’s cute, though, and she’s reminded again of how very lucky she is. She checks her other messages; there’s a few pictures from Zack of him and Ivy eating ice cream in what looks like Edinburgh, a video of a dog in a dinosaur costume from Player, and a link to an article about a new archeological site in Sicily from Julia.</p><p>She doesn’t have any new emails since she checked that morning, and with that she’s run out of things on her phone to fiddle with unless she calls someone. Carmen puts the phone back into her pocket and looks out the balcony window. There are no stars showing through the low clouds. The only light comes from streetlamps and the city proper in the distance. A car drives past and sends streaks of light through the dark room.</p><p>Now that she doesn’t have anything to focus on she feels pretty cold. There’s a blanket bunched up on top of the sofa but it feels a bit presumptuous to use it.</p><p>The muffled sound of water flowing through the pipes stops, and Gray comes back out of the hallway a little while after. He’s wearing sweatpants now, and a fleece lined jacket over a faded band shirt. But more importantly, he’s brought Carmen a jacket too. It’s the same brand and style but in a different color, an off-white to his own dark blue, which strikes her as a bit funny.</p><p>“It’s always cold in here, I think there’s something wrong with the thermostat. I could probably fix it, or at least talk to the landlord, but it’s a pretty nice problem to have on hot days.”</p><p>He switches on the lamp as he says this, bathing the room in a cold white light. Gray snags his backpack from the table before falling into his usual seat. The couch isn’t very big and his knee taps against hers briefly before he pulls back into himself.</p><p>He’s still slouched low against the cushions, though, and Carmen hears her mother’s quiet ‘sientate’ in her mind. She pulls on the jacket before she can give into the temptation to poke him as Carlotta would.</p><p>The fabric has been worn soft where it sits on her skin, and it smells like clean laundry. She’s a little disappointed but can’t pinpoint why.</p><p>Gray stares at the ceiling, seemingly lost in thought.</p><p>Carmen reaches out to touch his knee, fingers feather light, and he startles. He looks back at her questioningly. A reflexive, polite expression on his face that morphs into one of realization.</p><p>“Oh! Sorry, did you want a shower too? I know how much long stake-outs can suck and that alley gets pretty gross sometimes.”</p><p>“No, but thank you. I spent most of the wait on the roof across the street. It wasn’t bad at all.”</p><p>He nods, and looks relieved. Carmen wonders if it’s because he wasn’t prepared for her to use his shower or if he’s happy she didn’t spend a stinky couple hours waiting for him, but quickly decides it doesn’t matter.</p><p>Gray pulls a laptop out of the backpack and balances it on his knees but doesn’t open it. The two of them sit in a slightly uneasy silence.</p><p>Carmen doesn’t know how to approach the topic with grace so she decides to simply get right to the point. “Gray, why did you leave after Casablanca? If it’s not because you were afraid of me then why would you cut everyone off like that?”</p><p>Gray glances at her and then looks away. He breathes out slowly, scruffing his hair as he answers, “It’s not that I was afraid of you, it’s that I was afraid for you. I’d been a big part of your life while you were being controlled by VILE and I didn’t want to remind you of that by hanging around after you’d gotten your memories back.”</p><p>He looks down at his hands, still avoiding her. “I...I know what it’s like to go through that process. I know how confusing everything is when you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.”</p><p>“So don’t you think it would have been better for you to stay?” Carmen interrupts him, scooting closer so their knees touch again, “I could have used a familiar face.”</p><p>“You had familiar faces, you had Shadowsan and your teammates. People who were there for you when it really mattered, and who didn’t encourage you to be something you would have hated.”</p><p>He sounds bitter and resigned, like it’s something he’s told himself many times but still doesn’t really believe.</p><p>Carmen takes that as a positive sign, “But I wanted you, too.”</p><p>Gray’s hands curl closed where they sit on top of the computer and he looks at her helplessly.</p><p>She takes his hands. His fingers are warm and she knows hers are cold. From this close she can see the little curling locks of hair around the nape of his neck and his forehead where the water had soaked them, though the rest of his hair is dry.</p><p>Carmen moves closer again, their thighs pressed together on the small couch. She speaks quickly, and ducks down to catch his eyes as he tries to look away. “I wish you would have stayed, if only so that I could have someone to talk to about it. I was jumping at shadows for weeks, every time I looked at my friends I had to remind myself that I loved them because even now sometimes my first thought is that they’re outsiders and I shouldn’t trust them.”</p><p>Gray doesn’t say anything but his hands tighten around hers.</p><p>She continues, “How could they ever understand what it’s like to think you know who and what you are only to have it all fall apart? To have your reality restructured by someone else, to have memories of being someone you hate? I can’t talk to my friends about that. And I doubt there’s anyone here that you can talk to either. I was worried about you. But I also needed your help.”</p><p>He shakes his head. “It’s not just that. It took me 6 months to get you out of there, Carmen. And that’s not because I needed the damn planets to align for the extraction to work. I enjoyed working with you, even when I knew you weren’t yourself. I let it happen. I watched as you did things I knew you would deeply regret because I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe you could, I don’t know, grow into it and become the person I remembered. And we would be together again.”</p><p>He speaks like every word is a thorn he has to pull from his own mouth. Like the admittance is a form of penance itself.</p><p>“Hey.” Carmen pushes against his leg with hers. “I spent 18 years confused by VILE. I can forgive 6 months if that’s what you needed to see the truth.”</p><p>Gray frowns, tensing as though he’s going to stand. He stays sitting, though he pulls his hands from hers to lay them flat against the laptop. “Don’t do that. Don’t forgive me so quickly! I let them hurt you! I wanted them to do it!”</p><p>“No, you didn’t. You stopped them. And you stopped me, even before that. I remember being on missions with you where you would try to keep me from making worse decisions wherever possible. It didn’t always work, but I know you tried. You knew something was wrong from the beginning. Even if you still hoped it would work out.”</p><p>Carmen can see that Gray is still conflicted, torn between the reality of his actions and the horror of them. If he couldn’t even forgive himself, of course he wouldn’t be able to accept her forgiveness.</p><p>She offers it again, regardless. “Gray, you made a mistake. You trusted people you shouldn’t have. That doesn’t make you a bad person. Remember? We’re the good guys.”</p><p>She nudges his shoulder with hers until he smiles, ruefully, at the familiar words, “You keep saying that…”</p><p>“Because it’s the truth.”</p><p>He shifts to lean his head back against the top of the couch, staring at the ceiling again. Carmen hadn’t realized how close they’d gotten until the space yawned between them, wide and cold in the air conditioned apartment.</p><p>Gray speaks again, a casual tone that belies the serious nature of the words. “I think a lot about what you said, back at that cafe in Sydney. When I asked if we were the good guys and you just said yes. That certainty...sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me from throwing away everything I’ve worked for here. When I think about how easy it would be to steal something or hurt someone, I remember what you said. Even if I had no idea who I was at the time.”</p><p>He stops talking, the weight of his words settling around them like falling snow. Carmen knows he thinks he has just admitted to being weak, pathetically attached to a few words she’d said to a different person. That he doesn’t believe the mild-mannered version of himself who wished for such things exists within him anymore. </p><p>But Carmen also knows that VILE didn’t put anything into either of them, only enhanced and rearranged what was already there. Every day Carmen chooses to not be the merciless person they pulled out of her. Just as Gray is choosing now, though he can’t see it himself.</p><p>The only thing VILE ever did was take that choice away.</p><p>She repositions herself in her seat so that she faces him fully, watching him carefully for a little while without saying anything. He seems drained, like a stamp copied one too many times. The creases under his eyes are deep and his skin is paler than she’s ever seen it. She thinks he looks beautiful in the harsh light of his cheap lamp; exhausted, eaten alive by regret, and drowning in absolution. </p><p>Her movement disturbs him and he peeks at her from the corner of his eye, turning to catch her just a second too late as she leans in to nestle her head into the dip of his shoulder. His hand hovers uncertainly, uselessly, before settling across both of their laps.</p><p>Carmen drapes one arm loosely around his front, shifting a little more until she is comfortable against him. She waits until she feels him relax, then speaks again. “It wasn’t just when VILE tampered with your memories that you were a good person. The Gray that saved me when I would have killed him for it, the Gray that is trying his best to live a normal life? They’re good too. Who you are now is good enough.”</p><p>They sit in silence again, and listen to the wind pick up outside. She feels his head come to rest on top of hers just before she falls asleep.</p><p>~</p><p>Carmen wakes up to the sound of thunder a few hours later. Her internal clock is shot to hell from all her traveling but she thinks it's probably very early morning.</p><p>She realizes she is laying on top of Gray as soon as his chest rises beneath her in the soft, deep breath of sleep. At some point he’d pivoted them both so they lay along the couch rather than sitting against it, and he’d pulled the blanket down from the top of the cushions to cover them.</p><p>His legs bracket hers and one of his arms lays heavy across her back, keeping her from slipping off. She’s not sure how he got them into this position without waking her but she’s warm and comfortable so she’s not complaining.</p><p>She sits up slightly and looks around the room. His laptop is open on the table but the screen is black, as though he’d put it down and forgotten about it. He’d turned the lamp off at some point.</p><p>There’s another rumble of thunder in the distance, and a flash of lightning that turns everything in the room to silhouettes.</p><p>It’s finally raining.</p><p>Carmen feels Gray stir beneath her. Just the small amount of motion from her has woken him. He blinks at her sleepily, and she watches the confusion fade to be replaced with recognition.</p><p>His arm lifts from her back, nearly pulling away but at the last second his fingers smooth back down against her. “I, uh, probably should have moved one of us to the armchair.”</p><p>His voice is low and scratchy from sleep and she feels the faint vibration of it through his chest.</p><p>He doesn’t move to get up.</p><p>Neither does she.</p><p>The rain that washes down the glass door scatters a column of street light across his face. Carmen has seen Gray many times in the dark of night, or in the haze of rain. But she’s never seen him so unguarded. He is completely open before her. A vague list of attacks she could successfully pull off from here begins to spiderweb in the back of her mind but she waves it away. Looks into his soft eyes instead.</p><p>Carmen pushes herself up a little more from his chest, and moves one hand up towards his head. Gray doesn’t move, doesn’t even look away from her eyes to track her movement, trusting her implicitly. Her hand pauses near his neck and she is tempted to touch, but she keeps going to press it into the couch cushion next to his head. She shifts her weight forward so she hovers over him.</p><p>Gray watches her lazily. As her body moves, the hand that was on her spine slips down to rest warm on her hip. Carmen leans in and brushes her nose against his, the two of them simply breathing together for a moment before she retreats just enough to meet his eyes.</p><p>She breaks the relative silence, speaking just over the thrum of rain. “Can I kiss you?”</p><p>He seems surprised to be asked. The hint of a smile on his face fades as he looks up at her, leaving only a naked desire that renders her breathless. </p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>His voice is nearly lost in the sound of the rain, in the pounding of her heart, but she’s listening so intently that she couldn’t have missed it if she’d been across the room.</p><p>Carmen darts in, nerves and want and excitement pushing her nearly off-center as she presses her lips to his. The kiss is sweet, and chaste, and not quite what she’s looking for.</p><p>She presses harder.</p><p>Gray responds immediately, opening his mouth to her. His arms wrap around her tightly and she sighs into him. She lowers her body until all her weight is pressed onto him. The hand by his head tangles in his hair and the other grabs a fistful of his shirt over his heart, trying vainly to pull him closer still. </p><p>His mouth is hot and insistent against hers. Carmen draws back for a few heavy breaths before pressing a couple more kisses to his lips. He groans beneath her and she feels it reverberate through his chest and into hers. She shivers, heady with delight at this new sensation. </p><p>Carmen peppers kisses up his jaw and then starts down his neck. When she reaches the soft skin under his jaw she scrapes her teeth along it and gently bites down. </p><p>His chest jumps with a sudden inhale. She looks up, an apology ready on her tongue in case she was too rough. </p><p>In the watery, shimmering light from the balcony door, she can see Gray’s whole face is deeply flushed. His eyes are luminous, almost completely black with only a thin ring of brown showing around the edges. </p><p>He tilts his head back to give her more access. </p><p>Carmen feels a swooping sensation low in her stomach and she thinks her heart might burst from her chest. She dives back in, trailing open-mouth kisses down his throat and nipping at his hammering pulse until she reaches the dip between his collarbones and the hem of his shirt. She starts up the other side of his neck, multiplying the fading marks she’s already left.</p><p>Gray’s hands move to cradle her jaw, his touch is soft as another boom of thunder shakes the walls around them. He tugs her back up to his mouth and kisses her deeply again, licking into her mouth and rasping his tongue against hers.</p><p>She slips the hand that had been holding onto his shirt underneath it, enjoying the planes of muscle under her fingers before softly dragging her nails back down. Gray hums beneath her, the sound becoming a deep rumble as she repeats the action. She savors the heat of him, the blanket had long since fallen to the floor but every point of contact between them is warm and getting warmer.</p><p>His hands burrow under her shirt and slide up her rib cage, fingers teasing the skin just under the band of her bra. He pulls her lower lip into his mouth and digs in with his teeth as she takes it back. Carmen pulls away from him with a hiss and whispers his name against his lips. Her voice cracks slightly on the last syllable.</p><p>Gray surges up, pushing her back to her knees with a small surprised sound. He kisses her again, hard, and then pulls her up off the couch. He can’t seem to hold her close enough as they stumble back towards the hallway, stripping off their jackets and bumping into the table several times before they clear it. As they enter the hallway Carmen pulls him back by his collar, pinning herself between him and the cold wall as Gray smothers her face with tiny kisses. She’s laughing too much to reciprocate but she leans into him, drunk on happiness.</p><p>Once they make it to his bedroom they fall into his twin bed, a tangle of limbs that ends with Gray hovering over her this time. Carmen is still giggling from the trip but calms down as she realizes Gray seems frozen above her, taking in the sight of her messy hair against his pillow as if he believes he’ll never see it again.</p><p>Carmen reaches up, arms circling his neck, and gently pulls down where his shoulders are locked upright.</p><p>Gray blinks a few times, and then he’s back with her in his small bedroom. He grins crookedly and ducks down to kiss the bridge of her nose, her cheekbones, the corner of her lips. He drops to his elbows, rests his forehead against hers and for a moment they’re still. The rain outside and her fingers playing with the hair at his temples the only moving things in the world.</p><p>“Sorry the bed is so small.” He whispers, “Not much I could have done about it, but it still feels like an oversight on my part.”</p><p>Carmen breathes out a soft laugh. “No. It’s perfect just like this.”</p><p>Gray smiles against her lips. He kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her.</p><p>~</p><p>Carmen wakes up slowly, becoming aware of a bright light before she feels the need to open her eyes. A slow waking is a luxury she’s rarely had in her life and she lets herself enjoy it now, unhurriedly opening her eyes.</p><p>Her hair has come loose from the bun she’d pulled it into last night so it offers some protection from the searing, late morning sunlight. Not very much, though, and she grumbles as she turns her face away from the offending window. </p><p>As she comes more awake she begins to notice her surroundings; her back is against the wall with the window above, she's covered by several layers of thick blankets, her arms are wrapped tightly around someone but they’re not sleeping.</p><p>Once her eyes have adjusted, she looks up to see Gray reading a slim book by holding it above his face with one hand. His other arm is trapped beneath her where she’s been using him as a pillow. He seems perfectly content in that awkward position, managing to turn the page with one hand while his other mindlessly runs across her back as far as he can reach from the odd angle before returning to lay on the bed.</p><p>A memory flashes through her mind from her time as VILE’s super soldier.</p><p>She’d fallen asleep on a plush couch in a fancy hotel room somewhere in Prague. Carmen’s improvised stunts had nearly gotten their little team caught several times and they’d been forced to separate early on. She remembers being exhausted when she returned, though pleased with her awful work, and she hadn’t made it to her bedroom in the enormous suite they’d been sharing before crashing.</p><p>Gray had shaken her awake once he made it back, worried that she’d been hurt or that she might be ill. It was unusual for her to show any signs of imperfection, even among the privacy of her fellow operatives. </p><p>Especially then.</p><p>His hands had been gentle on her, not wanting to aggravate any potential injuries despite knowing without a doubt that she would not have returned the courtesy.</p><p>At the time she’d only been annoyed by his concern, slapping his hands away and sneering at his soft touch. She'd spent the night there with only her spite keeping her warm, but she can’t remember what she’d been so desperate to prove.</p><p>Carmen pulls herself back to the present and sits up from the cozy bed, stretching as she runs her fingers through her hair in an attempt to tame what she’s sure is a wild mess. She’s not sure where she lost her hair-tie but she’s not particularly motivated to go looking for it.</p><p>Gray takes his arm back and marks the page he’d been on, returning the book to his nightstand. He props his shoulders up with the pillow and smirks at her. “My whole arm’s nearly numb, I hope at least you were comfortable.”</p><p>She looks down, the vestiges of the memory leeching away as she takes in his mussed hair and the few red spots along his neck where she’d bitten a little too hard. He makes no attempt to cover them.</p><p>Carmen smiles magnanimously and collapses fully on top of him with a soft whump. “Hmmm, yes. Very comfortable.”</p><p>She rests her chin on the backs of her hands and watches another pretty blush bloom high on his cheeks and along the tips of his ears. He laughs, though, and rubs his hands along her back a few times, sparking warmth along her skin. She arches into the touch like a cat in a sunbeam.</p><p>The room is quiet, the sounds of the city outside muffled through the latched window. Carmen feels herself begin to drift off again in the warmth of the sunlight and his loose hold.</p><p>Her eyes open as Gray begins speaking, “I should probably get up to make some coffee. You know, at least try to keep to my regular schedule.”</p><p>Carmen blinks at him sleepily. “Do you have work today?” </p><p>She knows there aren’t any shows scheduled for a few days but she doesn’t want to assume that means he doesn’t still have to go in.</p><p>Gray hums thoughtfully and Carmen grins again at the vibration that echoes from his chest through hers, snuggling down to feel it stronger. He resumes his petting, lightly scratching his short nails along her spine until she melts into him.</p><p>“No,” He says, eventually, “nothing until a dress rehearsal in two days.”</p><p>Carmen nods as much as she is able to from where she lays and lets herself doze again.</p><p>They spend nearly another hour in bed, meandering in and out of sleep until her stomach makes itself heard. At this, Gray finally does peel himself out of her arms. Carmen pouts and bundles herself deeper into the blankets. The cool air of his stupid freezing apartment creeping over her flushed skin.</p><p>“Right. Seriously, I’m going to go make some coffee. The bathroom is across the hall, there’s an unused toothbrush in the top drawer if you want it. Er, shower’s available too I suppose. I can, uh...”</p><p>He trails off, looking a little lost. He doesn’t seem to know what he’s supposed to offer her in this situation, though Carmen can’t say she has the faintest idea either. He scratches the back of his head and turns to walk out the door.</p><p>She doesn’t stay in the little bed much longer, even if it is warm and soft and quiet and everything she’s been searching for since she dove out of the window in Morocco. She half-heartedly digs through the sheets until she finds her hair tie then takes the plunge into the cold air.</p><p>The bathroom is easy to find and, predictably, the tile floor feels like ice on her bare feet. She unconsciously catalogs the sparse decor and few items scattered across the counter.</p><p>There's a box of floss and a meticulously rolled tube of toothpaste, a cup that holds a blue toothbrush, a small hex wrench that she assumes he found in his pocket one day and never put back, and a comb resting on the edge of the sink. She doesn't know if he left it out on purpose but she takes advantage of it, dragging it through her curls until she can pull them up into her usual high bun.</p><p>When she opens the top drawer she sees some more hair products and things like bandaids and burn creams. She's briefly pleased to see that the spare toothbrush he mentioned is red, but then wonders if maybe he'd shoved it so far into the back of the drawer for that very reason. </p><p>She’s very tempted to dig through the rest of the drawers and cabinets but makes herself leave before she can give in.</p><p>Despite the inviting smells from the kitchen, she takes a detour back to the sofa in the living room. Her cheeks warm as she picks up the white jacket he loaned her from where it hangs off the edge of the table, remembering vividly how it got there. She’s about to put it on but at the last second she swaps it for the dark blue one that's flung haphazardly over the top cushions.</p><p>This one smells like him, she thinks as her blush grows. She’s embarrassed enough just putting on his coat in the first place, but she burrows her face into the fluffy collar anyway and breathes in the smell of laundry soap, something cedar-y that she thinks is aftershave or deodorant, and a mellow scent underneath like the smell of the apartment condensed. It’s something like the dust kicked up by the first raindrops of the season, something like citrus leaves in the sun, something like metal and the smell of ozone on the wind before a storm…</p><p>Carmen stops herself before she digs a hole she’ll never climb out of. She picks up the blanket from the floor and folds it unthinkingly, trying to distract herself from the scent that follows her every movement.</p><p>She hears the sound of eggs hitting a hot pan and looks over to see Gray checking something on his phone while standing in front of the stove. Her blush returns at the thought that he might have seen her sniffing his jacket like a weirdo, but she pushes it down and makes her way over to the dining table. The tool kit had been moved to the floor and she could see the notebooks stacked neatly on top.  </p><p>Carmen takes the seat where the box had been. She debates saying something so he’ll know she’s there, but ultimately decides against it. She’d been quiet but there was no way he didn’t have at least some idea of where she was.</p><p>Gray turns around with a plate of fried eggs and toast in each hand, pausing in his stride ever so slightly as he takes in the image of her in his coat at his table. He recovers quickly, placing her plate down and fetching the two mugs of coffee and a bowl of sugar from the counter. He apologizes for not having milk but Carmen waves it away.</p><p>She hasn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, so she goes in for a bite as soon as he’s settled in his chair across from her. The egg yolks are a little too set, closer to over-hard than over-easy, and the crisp edges are nearly burnt. She gets the feeling he doesn’t cook like this very often but she eats gratefully anyway.</p><p>When she goes for a sip of coffee she realizes he hasn’t started eating. She raises an eyebrow at him over the rim of the mug.</p><p>“Do you...want vegemite for the toast?” he blurts out, and Carmen watches with amusement as several emotions play across his face in quick succession. First he’s embarrassed, then a little angry, then curious, as though he thinks maybe she really might want it and he’s not actually sure if he has any in his cupboards.</p><p>“Vegemite?” She asks, a little incredulous that that’s where his mind went. She’s had the stuff before but can’t say she’s a big fan of the flavor.</p><p>“It’s a paste made from brewer’s yeast. Kind of intense but very popular around these parts. I think I have a jar somewhere-”</p><p>“That’s okay, I’ll pass.” Carmen interrupts him as he moves to get up.</p><p>Gray nods, and looks back down. He makes quick work of his plate, pulling a face at the eggs, and finishes with a long sip of the coffee. “How long do you plan on staying in Perth? I don’t know if you’ve booked a hotel somewhere, but you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”</p><p>Carmen answers plainly, “I don’t really have a plan, to be honest. When I came here I was half expecting to leave the same day.”</p><p>Gray is a little taken aback by that, and she knows he's remembering her words from when he'd first caught her in the alley. He seems struck by the idea that if everything had gone as she'd expected, then they never would have met, or spoken.</p><p>They would never have come back here together.</p><p>She wouldn’t be eating breakfast with him right now but would be on a plane back to Argentina instead, believing the reason he’d rejected her was because he couldn’t stand the sight of her. Carmen finds she’s also saddened by the idea, even if she had been so certain of it barely 24 hours ago.</p><p>She can see him making the connections and his arms go rigid by his sides. Carmen wants to reach for them but isn’t sure how he would respond. What had been so easy in the dark feels like an impossible cliff to scale in the morning light. </p><p>Her hands flex around the warm coffee mug.</p><p>“I’m sorry I ever gave you the idea that I could hate you.” His voice is quiet, a bitter slant to his mouth that has nothing to do with his black coffee.</p><p>Carmen knows this, he already said it yesterday. She thinks what he is actually saying now is not 'I don't hate you', but rather 'please don't hate me'. ‘Forgive me for what I felt I had to do.’</p><p>She matches his tone when she answers, “I understand. What you said about me after Casablanca is exactly what I said about you after we met in Sydney. Remember when I stood you up at the cafe?”</p><p>He looks shocked, wide brown eyes shining gold in the late morning sunlight.</p><p>Carmen continues, “I thought I was doing what was best for both of us, but it probably only made it worse. I’ve actually had kind of a rude awakening on the subject recently.”</p><p>She pauses to piece together her thoughts. Gray drops his head into his hands and she hears him mutter “What a pair…” </p><p>Carmen hums in agreement. “I don’t think there’s a point to staying apart the way we’ve been trying to do. I think...people like us should stick together. Even if we’re going different directions in our lives, we can still visit, or video chat, or call, or something! Anything! The only thing we have to lose is each other, right? And maybe that’s all we have to gain too. But isn’t that enough to make it worth it?”</p><p>Gray is silent. He doesn’t even look up from where he’s hanging his head.</p><p>Carmen sighs, and leans back into her chair. She can’t begin to guess what he’s thinking this time. </p><p>She stands up and takes both their plates to the sink. There’s a sponge sitting on the edge that she uses to scrub the oil from the plates, but she isn’t sure what his system is from there so she leaves the clean plates in the basin. As she puts them together she realizes they don’t quite match. As though he’d gone to a secondhand shop and bought exactly the number of plates he needed rather than getting a set, matching them as much as possible but never quite getting it perfect.</p><p>She’s not sure if that says anything about him in particular, but she thinks it’s a little charming.</p><p>Carmen steps away from the sink, feeling her pocket buzz with a text message. She looks back at Gray before she checks it. He still hasn’t said anything but he’s looking out the balcony window now, which she hopes is some kind of progress.</p><p>The message is from her mother, asking if Carmen can snap a few pictures of Australian wildlife for her to show the younger kids at the orphanage.</p><p>Carmen makes a soft, curious sound. She doesn’t know if there are any wildlife parks nearby, it wasn’t something she’d thought would come up on this trip so she hadn’t looked into it at all. She immediately opens the message app she uses to talk to Player, but then frowns at her screen and exits before typing anything. This is a simple request, directing Player's resources towards it would feel a bit like using a helicopter as a leaf blower. She quickly opens a few travel sites and looks through tours offered in the area, spotting one in a large park at the edge of the city. She doesn't have a car here - didn't think to rent one and doesn’t want to steal one - but there’s a tour bus leaving soon that she thinks she can catch if she’s fast. The next one isn’t for several hours.</p><p>She’s still looking through the ticket information as she calls out to Gray, “Hey, something’s come up and I need to head out as soon as possible. I'm not sure how long-”</p><p>The sound of his chair neatly toppling over brings her eyes up from the phone just in time to see Gray nearly tripping in his haste to reach her. His hand shoots out, grabbing her wrist in a bruising grip.</p><p>“Don’t leave! Please! Whatever mission you just got or, whoever called you home, please don’t leave yet!”</p><p>She’s too confused to correct him, and he starts talking again before she’s able to sort it out. “Look, all of this is so fucking stupid! We keep thinking we’re doing what’s best for everyone but we’ve both been so pointlessly miserable for so long. I swear Carmen, I don’t want to go another day without seeing you!”</p><p>Carmen’s eyes widen as she takes in his sudden words and the desperation in his eyes. She feels as though she is in free-fall. Like she’d been pulling against a leash for such a long time that she’d forgotten the pain of it, grown jagged around the places it cut into her, only for Gray to sever it in one fell swoop.</p><p>No one has ever said that to her before.</p><p>Gray realizes the painful grip he has on her in the silence that trembles, fragile as spun glass, between them. He loosens his hold but doesn’t let go entirely, swiping his thumb apologetically across her wrist. “Stay here with me. Please. I know this apartment sucks and it’s too hot outside and it’s too cold in here and the whole thing is stupid but…wait...no. Your mom is in Argentina. You can’t stay here. But I can go there! Let me go with you!”</p><p>He says all of this with the same breathless determination. It’s almost too much for her to take in, too much of what she’s been searching for her whole life but never dared to ask for. The aching desire to be simply wanted; not needed, not missed, not tolerated. To be chosen. </p><p>His words tear open a long healed scar inside of her.</p><p>“Do you mean that? It would be a pretty drastic change.” Her voice is steady, despite the cavernous feeling that’s opened in her chest.</p><p>Gray seems to finally relax at her acceptance. He grins and steps closer, taking her other wrist. They hang heavy and limp in his hands but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Of course! I mean, what’s keeping me here? A job and a basil plant that won’t grow? I’m sure I can get those in Argentina.”</p><p>He’s laughing, quick and bright just as he used to, and Carmen wants to join in. But she can’t shake the feeling that she’s standing on a trapdoor, not knowing if or when it’ll fall out from under her.</p><p>She looks down at their hands and tries to put words to the feeling. “I just don’t want to pressure you into doing something you’ll regret.”</p><p>“I’ve already done that!” He laughs, “Let’s try something new!”</p><p>Carmen wants to keep arguing to make him think this through. Doesn’t want to open herself up to the possibility of abandonment once again. Doesn’t want him to even have the opportunity to think of her as a mistake.</p><p>But she remembers Ivy’s words from when they’d all crowded into her tiny kitchen last month, remembers what she herself had said years ago.</p><p>
  <em>Hold on tight, and don’t let go.</em>
</p><p>She turns her wrists in the loose cage of his hands, feeling the soft scrape of his calluses on hers.</p><p>‘Could it be so easy?’ she thinks, for the second time in as many months.</p><p>When she looks back up she notices that Gray has stopped laughing, and in fact looks quite nervous at her prolonged silence. Somehow it’s this that causes her eyes to well up, rather than any of her spiraling thoughts.</p><p>Carmen chokes out a laugh, bringing one hand up to wipe away a tear that escapes. “I would like that very much. Please move across the world with me.”</p><p>It’s an absurd thing to ask. She can barely get the words out through her laughter and tears.</p><p>Gray wraps his arms around her waist and lifts her off the ground. He’s smiling so wide it looks painful, dimples cutting deep into his cheeks.</p><p>“CARMEN, YOU BEAUTY!” He crows, laughing again.</p><p>“Gray!” She tries to protest, scrabbling at his broad shoulders. “Put me down!”</p><p>He blunders forward with her feet kicking at his shins until they bump into the kitchen counter, only then letting her slip down his chest to the floor and chasing her lips with his. She leans up to meet him halfway.</p><p>Their lips slide together easily, remembering the shape of their affection from the previous night. She still feels the creeping suspicion that things are going too well, that they’re going to fall apart again as soon as they get back to Buenos Aires, but she pushes it down in favor of pressing another kiss into his lips. And another.</p><p>For every one kiss Gray gives her, Carmen returns three. Trying to show her gratitude where her words fail to capture the size of it.</p><p>They trade kisses lazily until he moves his hands up to rest at the back of her neck, holding her steady as he drops his lips to her forehead in a lingering kiss. Her eyes are closed as he pulls away slightly, but she feels him move to embrace her, to hold her snug against him until they can feel each other's heartbeats.</p><p>'Alive.' she reminds herself. 'Alive and safe and happy.'</p><p>They spend a few minutes like that, standing in his kitchen entirely wrapped up in each other, until Carmen can’t take it anymore.</p><p>She noses at his neck as she speaks, trying to break the news gently. “I don’t mean to spoil the mood, but I wasn’t actually going to go home or on a mission. My mother texted me asking if I could get some pictures of kangaroos so I was trying to say I needed to catch a tour bus to the wildlife park. I would have been back in a couple of hours.”</p><p>Gray grabs her shoulders and holds her out at arm’s length, leveling her with a flat look. </p><p>Once he ascertains that she’s telling the truth from her sheepish wince, he takes a deep breath and looks up to the ceiling. </p><p>Carmen is prepared to pull up the chat in her defense but as he exhales he yanks her back into him and pins her there tightly.</p><p>“For God’s sake, don’t scare me like that!”</p><p>Carmen’s snickering is muffled where her face is squished into his shoulder.</p><p>He continues, “You don’t need a bloody tour bus! I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not exactly busy, I’ll just drive you there myself. Where is this place again?”</p><p>She scrolls through her phone in the cramped space between their bodies, holding it up to his face once she reaches the map.</p><p>Gray doesn’t let go while he squints at the tiny map, pulls her tighter to him as he leans forward to read it, “Swan Valley? That sounds familiar. I’ve never been there but it can’t be that hard to find.”</p><p>Carmen slips the phone back into her pocket. She listens to him ramble about following the drunken tourists to get there and she feels the trapdoor make itself known again, like a cold breeze over her heart.</p><p>If she hadn't been serious about leaving, then was he still serious about moving?</p><p>She hates that she's like this. That she can't trust any good thing that happens to her if she didn't have to claw and fight and bleed for it.</p><p>Gray feels her go still in the circle of his arms. “...Carmen?”</p><p>He tries to pull back so he can look at her but she digs her fingers into his shirt, her arms turning to steel bands around his torso.</p><p>She can’t meet his eyes.</p><p>“Do you still want to move in with me?” </p><p>Her voice is small and pathetic now, old fears dug up with such efficiency that she begins to get angry at him for the generosity he dangles in front of her. She had grown up with this pain, had lived 22 years with it, so why was it only now making itself known? What was wrong with her that she was unable to accept what was being offered freely?</p><p>Gray also seems baffled by her mood swings, which she recognizes as fair but knows it's too late to stop the onslaught of anxiety. They both start talking at the same time, trying to speak over each other.</p><p>“What? I’m not gonna change my mind just because of a tiny miscommunication-”</p><p>“It’s just that Buenos Aires is really far away and it’s different there so I’m not sure you’ll like it-”</p><p>“Carmen what the hell are you talking about?”</p><p>“ -I’ll understand if you don’t actually want to go, I won’t be mad-”</p><p>“Carmen-”</p><p>“ -you don’t have to do it just because it’ll make me happy! You should do what you want-”</p><p>“Carmen!”</p><p>She stops. Her eyes flick up to his worried face and back down to focus on his shirt.</p><p>He gives her a little shake, as though hoping he could jostle insecurities from her like dead leaves from a tree. “Hey. I’m not moving in with you because I think I’m gonna love Buenos Aires. I’m sure it’s very nice but if you told me you were moving to the arctic circle, I would follow you there too. Okay?”</p><p>Carmen bites her lip until it stings, barely processing his words.</p><p>He keeps going when he realizes he’s not going to get an answer. “Would I question your sanity every day in that frozen hellscape? Yes. Would I still happily greet our cute little penguin neighbors every day? Yes! Because I’d be there with you! Whatever else happens, that’s what’s important. You said it yourself! Didn’t you mean it when you said we should stick together?”</p><p>Carmen is quick to nod. She had meant it, she still means it. She thinks it should be obvious from the way she still desperately clutches at him that she wants to stay connected in any way he’ll let her.</p><p>“Okay then. I know I’ve done nothing to inspire any faith or confidence, but please let me do this. I just want to be with you. Not because of where you’re going, or what you can do for me, or anything like that, but because I like you a lot and I want to be around you. That’s it. That’s the only reason.” Gray scrubs his hands up and down her shoulders, her skin warming with the friction.</p><p>She nods again, slower, letting his words soothe over the exposed edges of her mind.</p><p>Her forehead bumps into his shoulder before she realizes she’s moving, and she breathes in the clean, metallic scent of him again.</p><p>‘Of course,’ she thinks, ‘this is Gray. He’s not going to hurt me.’</p><p>She feels herself come back to her body, the weight of her bones and the flush of her blood. Feels the warmth of his palms where they sit on her lower back, anchoring her to this moment in time.</p><p>If there’s three things in the entire world that she can be certain of, it’s that her mother is worried about her, Zack is hungry, and Gray is going to do everything he can to take care of her.</p><p>She opens her mouth to say something along the lines of ‘thank you’ or ‘I’m sorry’, but instead she murmurs, “There aren’t any penguins in the arctic circle.”</p><p>Both of them pause. </p><p>If she couldn’t look him in the eyes before, she definitely can’t now. She thinks her face is probably red enough to stop traffic.</p><p>Gray laughs, though, because of course he does. “See? I told you it was a bad idea to go there.”</p><p>Carmen’s lips twitch, “There’s penguins in Argentina, though. They have bushy eyebrows and they’re called macaroni.”</p><p>“Right. You’re just making these up now.”</p><p>She pulls back from the embrace to glare at him in fake offense, but his sly, fond smile softens her instantly. </p><p>She looks away, cheeks reddening again. “I’m sorry I kind of freaked out there. Sometimes it’s hard to give up control of a situation even if the new one is better.”</p><p>He doesn’t respond to that, except to push a lock of her hair out of her face.</p><p>She leans into the touch, “I know we both said it earlier but I feel like it bears repeating. When you come to Buenos Aires, will you move in with me? You’ll have to learn Spanish to talk to my mother.”</p><p>“First, yes I would like nothing more. Second, I’m insulted that you think I don’t already speak Spanish. It’s a common language, it would have been negligent of me to not learn it.”</p><p>“What?! Really? But you never say anything in Spanish!”</p><p>He looks slightly embarrassed, “Countess Cleo said my accent is atrocious and that I should keep it to myself unless it’s absolutely necessary.”</p><p>Carmen stares at him for a moment, knowing she shouldn’t laugh but unable to stop herself. It bursts from her chest like a flock of birds taking flight.</p><p>Gray makes a few vague sounds of protest. His hands come up to gesticulate but Carmen snatches them out of the air and holds them close. She can hear his breath stick in his throat as she brings his knuckles to her lips, smiling gently as she says, “I can work with that.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>you beauty/what a beauty - Australian slang for 'that's fantastic!' or 'that's great!', term for excited approval<br/>(I'm not certain it's a perfect fit for my application here but it felt right and isn't that what slang is really about?)</p><p>Anyway, how many obvious metaphors is too many? Asking for a friend.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>......................... ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿ did someone say beach episode?</p><p>But seriously, I don't speak hardly any of the languages I've used here. I know very little Spanish, less Australian, and no Boston at all. If my google translate is so bad it's distracting, &lt;<em>then please just read the subtitles, lol</em>&gt;</p><p>Also I decided not to use the proper Spanish punctuation because I thought it might be distracting here, but now that I think about it, maybe it's more distracting to not have it...</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Gray arrives on Carmen’s doorstep he does so with three things in hand; a suitcase filled with the few items he’d deemed worthy to keep, a trunk on his back with his clothes folded neatly inside, and the damnable basil plant that decided to sprout a few days before he moved across the entire fucking planet.</p><p>He’d had to carry it through three airports and he swore the little bastard only got stronger with every side-eye and glare that he sent it’s way. It’s little leaves bobbing cheerfully just to spite him.</p><p>‘Well, whatever.’ he thinks, pulling his earbuds out as he double checks the address, ‘Carmen will probably get a kick out of it.’</p><p>She always did love an underdog.</p><p>It’s been a little over a week since he’s seen her. 8 days and 17 hours, not that he’s counting. Not that it matters. </p><p>He’d put in his two week notice on his first day back after their eventful breakfast and she’d stayed with him for the rest of the week. Exploring the city as much as possible in the mornings before he had to leave for his matinee shift, helping him pack what little he wanted to keep and finding donation sites for the rest of the stuff in the evenings.</p><p>He’d never loved his apartment more than when he’d been preparing to leave it. When he would see her doing research at his table after returning from work, or when he’d come back for his lunch break and see her sprawled across his couch chatting with Julia or Player. Or when she’d decide he’d worked enough for the evening and would move his computer to the coffee table to take her own spot on his lap.</p><p>It had been a real struggle to not bring that loveseat along with him. Carmen had consoled him with the promise that she did indeed have her own couches back in Buenos Aires.</p><p>But of course, nothing so perfect could last forever. </p><p>Carmen had been called away a week before his move would be finalized. Really called away this time, not just a misunderstanding. Chief’s hologram had stood in his kitchen to inform her that another rogue VILE agent had been located moving from South Korea to Canada and they needed her to assist in the take-down.</p><p>Gray had watched the conversation from the hallway just out of the older woman’s sight. He’d wondered if ACME had known where Carmen was, and given that she even had one of their hologram pens on her, he’d bet the answer was yes.</p><p>Carmen had never said they weren’t tracking her. She’d never promised that she would keep his location a secret and he’d never asked her to. He hadn’t felt betrayed by the confirmation, but he was still apprehensive. Chief had wiped his record as thanks for his part in taking down VILE, had even implied that she would accept if he applied to work for her, but Gray couldn’t bring himself to trust her or her shadow organization after everything he’d seen. Especially now that he knew Carmen wasn’t their biggest fan either.</p><p>So he’d skulked around instead, pouting that she would be leaving so soon and hating that she still had to work for those bluecoats. Hadn’t she given enough to ACME and Interpol and the entire damn world? Even if they’d never know? She should be allowed to live the rest of her life in peace, away from all of this subterfuge bullshit. </p><p>But he knew that better than anyone that she would never accept a calm life. Both of them too restless in their own skin to ever settle down quietly and be satisfied.</p><p>Carmen, sweet thing, had thought his sudden moodiness had been because she’d activated the ACME pen without telling him. She’d sworn up and down that she’d taken any tracking hardware out herself. Admitted that while Chief probably did know she was in Australia, the ACME director had no way of knowing exactly where she was or what she was doing. She’d pushed the pen into his hands before he’d had time to object, telling him to search it himself.</p><p>“I promise it’s not bugged anymore. I wouldn’t put you in danger like that!”</p><p>She nearly shook with anger at the idea, her grey eyes cold and hard. He doubted she meant that ACME would hunt him down, but rather she was outraged at the idea that she could have even potentially been a source for anyone less savory than herself to find him. </p><p>If there had ever been someone in his life who’d cared for him in that way, protected him so fiercely as though his safety was actually worth anything at all, Gray couldn’t remember it. He’d tossed the pen onto the table without a second glance, pulling her close to show her just how much he trusted her. </p><p>Gray had never met The Troll but he’d heard of him, and was familiar enough with the man’s line of work to know that he probably wouldn’t be able to keep in contact with Carmen while she hunted him down. </p><p>‘On borrowed time once again.’ He’d thought then, as his lips slanted across hers. Selfish and bitter everywhere that she was noble and forgiving.</p><p>Gray pulls his thoughts back to the present, shifts the plant to his other arm so he can ring the doorbell once he confirms he’s at the right place. He hears some shuffling in the apartment, then silence. </p><p>‘Is she looking through the peephole?’ He thinks, glancing up into the rafters over her door, ‘Or maybe she put cameras out-’</p><p> The door flies open.</p><p>“GRAY!”</p><p>His meandering thoughts are obliterated at the sight of her. She’s even more beautiful than when they last saw each other, grey eyes shining and teeth flashing behind her painted lips. He’s only just able to take in her loose hair and pale blue sundress before she launches herself at him, laughing. Carmen’s arms wrap around his neck and pull his face down in a near strangling embrace.</p><p>Gray can’t help but laugh with her, muffled as he is in her soft hair. He blindly paws for the handle of his suitcase when she begins to tug him backwards into her home.</p><p>“So uh, how did the mission go?” Gray starts once he’s gotten his luggage inside and nudged the door shut with his foot, his arms once again occupied with the firm warmth of Carmen and the cool edges of the terracotta pot. He shoves the telescoping handle of the suitcase back into the slot on top of the bag and tries to shimmy the stupid plant down onto the flat surface without separating.</p><p>“Fine.” Carmen’s voice speaks directly in his ear, sending a shiver down his spine. He feels her breath feather over his skin as she continues, “The Troll is in an ACME cell for now, but I doubt they’ll hold him long with their current systems.”</p><p>Her words are curt, dismissive. Gray isn’t sure if it’s because she’s annoyed about the fact or if she figures it’s no longer her problem and doesn’t feel the need to talk about it more.</p><p>He knows which one he would feel if their circumstances were reversed, which he thinks is a safe indication of which one Carmen is definitely not feeling.</p><p>Carmen begins to pull away slightly and he’s finally able to put the basil down. He reaches up to grab her arm that’s still wrapped around his neck. Whether to offer comfort or to keep her in his arms just a little longer, he couldn’t say. </p><p>“Well you know, worst case scenario you’re just on the job a bit-” Gray cuts himself off as she catches his eyes, her smirk telling him exactly why she was impatient with this conversation. </p><p>It’s a short distance between them but it’s still far too long before their lips meet again.</p><p>She kisses him roughly, molding her lips to his with such intensity that he groans into her mouth. Her hands stroke down his neck to grab his shirt collar and drag him further inside.</p><p>Gray quickly ducks his arms under the straps of his trunk and lets it fall from his back with a heavy clatter. He follows her willingly, blissfully, pressing heavy kisses everywhere he can reach. Her lips are tacky from the lipstick she wears and he’s dimly aware that they’re smudging it across each other’s face every time they connect.</p><p>Their movement comes to an abrupt halt when Carmen bumps into something waist-high that creaks a little. </p><p>‘Dining table, front door near the kitchen, open floor plan.’ The back of his mind supplies, less than helpfully. Gray buries that thought under ones that are far more important. The tense of her muscles as she pulls him closer and down. The jut of her hips where they’re stopped by the table. The soft sound she makes when he scoops her up so she’s sitting on it rather than leaning back against it.</p><p>The palms of his hands scrape over the soft fabric of her dress, from the backs of her thighs to her knees where the hem of the dress ends and the tips of his fingers just brush her skin. Carmen hums into his kiss as he gently hooks his fingers into the sensitive hollow behind the joint then gasps as he suddenly grips tight and pulls her back towards him, wedging himself in the V of her legs. He takes the opportunity to lick into her mouth, running his tongue across hers before pulling back for a breath of air.</p><p>Carmen’s lips slip down his jaw to leave a sticky trail of vibrant red against his pulse. Her nimble hands quickly undo the buttons of his shirt and her palms smooth against his upper chest, chased by her mouth. He lets his hands roam across the expanse of skin that her hiked dress reveals, breathes in the scent of her floral shampoo.</p><p>She opens another button on his shirt but slower this time, kissing down to the low collar of his undershirt before stopping altogether. He brings his hand up to thread into the hair behind her ear. Carmen leans into the touch like always but she doesn’t look up at him as he’d hoped she would, and he worries he’s pushed things a little too far too fast.</p><p>Gray tilts away to see her expression and feels a hungry thrill at the sight of her smeared lipstick and swollen lips. Her dilated eyes. She certainly looks well-kissed, but he thinks fewer clothes and more disheveled hair would improve the image if she’d let him.</p><p>She halfheartedly straightens his shirt, skimming her fingertips along the marks she’s left on his neck with an appraising smile before finally meeting his gaze.</p><p>“My mother will be coming over soon with some sweets as an excuse to meet you. We shouldn’t get too comfortable.” She nuzzles into his wrist as she says this and he feels his anxiety change course and ratchet up a few degrees. </p><p>“Bloody plane landed today and I’m already getting the shotgun speech? Do you reckon that means I’m ahead of the curve or behind?”</p><p>Carmen chuckles softly, turning her head to kiss his inner forearm. It leaves a faint stain and he laughs to think of how much of the makeup must be on him already that the imprint is so faded now.</p><p>She licks the pad of her thumb and wipes away the mark. “I think it actually has very little to do with either of us. She's just excited to have not missed every parental milestone.”</p><p>Gray isn’t sure how to respond to that. Isn’t sure if this means she wants to get cleaned up now and wait or keep going until the last minute, but also isn’t sure how to ask without sounding crass. He lets his free hand creep up her leg again to where her dress is bunched at the very top of her thigh, dips the tips of his fingers beneath the fabric for just a moment before sweeping down along the outer edge until he’s back at her knee.</p><p>He’ll accept whatever she wants to do, of course, and he tries to convey that through his touch and only slightly impatient silence.</p><p>As usual, Carmen manages to intuit his predicament, “Mamá always texts me as she’s leaving. It takes 16 minutes to get here with no traffic and easy parking.”</p><p>“Has she texted you already?” His voice is the low rumble he knows she likes, and he doesn’t bother hiding a cocky grin when he feels her consciously remember to take a breath.</p><p>“No, not yet. So we still have some time.”</p><p>Gray feels heat flare inside him, wonders if she can feel his pulse speed up where his wrist is still pressed against her cheek. Carmen smirks at him again and runs her hands over his shoulders. She angles her face up to be kissed again and waits, watching him with a smug assurance that makes him want to kiss and touch and suck and bite until the only emotion she shows is the pure adoration that he feels all the time.</p><p>He shifts the hand on her leg to her lower back, pulling her to him as close as they can get in their current position. Her legs wrap around the back of his. God, he wants her desperately but he finds he’s embarrassed by the blatant, needy desire palpable in the air between them. He tries to make a joke out of it, tries to smirk at her in return and take back some control of the situation. “Crikey, look at us. It's only been a week after all.”</p><p>“It’s been 8 days and 17 hours.” Carmen answers simply.</p><p>Gray feels a bit like he’s been hit with the crackle rod again. He tightens his fingers in her hair until she gasps and drags her up to his mouth for a searing kiss.</p><p>~</p><p>Carlotta doesn’t pay much attention to him when she first arrives, merely greets him politely and hands off her shopping bags before moving on to swamp her daughter in a dramatic bear hug. </p><p>“Mi princesa! Te extrañé mucho! Tanto! Tanto!” &lt;<em>My princess! I missed you so much! So much! So much!</em>&gt; She rocks side to side as she heaps on the affection. Gray goes to put the bags of sweets on the kitchen counter and laughs to himself when he sees Carmen’s feet begin to leave the floor with each sway. </p><p>“Mamá, te visité ayer!” &lt;<em>Mom, I visited yesterday!</em>&gt; Carmen complains with a big smile, struggling to return the embrace from where her mother has pinned her arms to her sides.</p><p>“Y qué? De todos modos te extrañé.” &lt;<em>And so what? I missed you anyway.</em>&gt;</p><p>Gray stands back and watches them sort through the fruits and confections Carlotta brought with her, surely far more food than three people can reasonably eat. He’s shocked by how similar they look. True, Carlotta is older, sadder, but the resemblance is uncanny. She has the same intelligent grey eyes. The same red hair but streaked with brown and grey rather than sun-bleached bronze. The same air of mischievous virtue that draws people in and makes them want to learn more about her, want to try and impress her.</p><p>They babble happily in Spanish to one another, too fast and with too much slang for him to get any more than the gist of what they’re saying. They talk about the quality of the fruit though Gray doesn’t quite catch whether it’s good or bad for this time of the year. Carlotta begins a story about the first time she went to the cafe that she got the pastries from and the two giggle over something the owner said to her, but Gray is pretty sure he’s misheard when she mentions a catfish.</p><p>Rather than hang around and obviously struggle to keep up, Gray steps away to take in more of the apartment around him the way he probably should have done upon first entry. He defends his actions to himself with a reminder that he’d been very preoccupied.</p><p>He’d been correct in his distracted analysis earlier, the front door leads directly into an open rectangular space with the dining room they’d stumbled blindly into crammed in the left side and a den area with a TV and Carmen’s promised couches on the right. The kitchen that she and her mother currently bustle around in is connected to the dining room at the far side of the room, though partially separated by a bar counter with a few stools under it. </p><p>There’s a small concrete balcony connected similarly to the living room. It has a beautiful view of the city from the tenth story the apartment sits on, but he thinks it would be a tight squeeze to get three people comfortably past the glass doors. Carmen has instead completely filled it with large potted plants which double as a makeshift privacy screen and an early warning system if anyone were to try and sneak in that way.</p><p>‘Maybe that’s not expressly why she put them there.’ He thinks, looking around at all the other houseplants that cluster on just about every flat surface in the apartment. Maybe that was just an added bonus.</p><p>On the other side of the living room is a doorway that leads to a wide hallway with a laundry area on one end and the bathroom where he’d spent several minutes scrubbing lipstick off of himself on the other. Between them were a pair of doors, one closed that he assumes is an office or a guest room or perhaps an exciting combination of office and guest room, while the other had been slightly open, revealing a tantalizing peek at Carmen’s bedroom. </p><p>He’d paused on his way back from the bathroom, unable to resist, and found a room decorated in the same simple style as the main room. A queen size bed, a dresser and closet, some more plants. A few baby pictures her mother must have given her of the two of them and a man he assumes is her father. Considerably more photos of the redhead siblings he’s never met but has heard plenty about. Her familiar set of matryoshka dolls sat on the windowsill and he’d taken a minute to pick up the largest one, running his thumb over it’s little painted face. He vividly remembers their oddly homey presence on her bedside table at VILE Academy. Remembers when he had tried to use them against her in Poitiers.</p><p>He may have stood there the rest of the day, trapped in the whirlpool of memories and regrets, if Carmen hadn’t called him back to the dining room. She’d found his stupid basil seedling and wanted to know if she should put it with her other herbs or if it would want more light. Gray had said the damn thing would be lucky to get whatever she was willing to give it and she - precious and beautiful - had laughed. Had carried the pathetic thing over to a sunny spot with a tenderness it unquestionably didn’t deserve.</p><p>Gray eyes the little sprout where it sits innocently on the counter next to Carmen’s thriving oregano shrub. He tries to telepathically communicate to it that if it doesn’t grow well here then he’s going to blend it up, stalk and all, for pizza sauce. </p><p>A drop rolls off one of the leaves from when Carmen had watered it earlier, which he takes as an oath-binding confirmation that his message was received.</p><p>"Gray, ven a sentarte con nosotros!” &lt;<em>Gray, come and sit with us!</em>&gt; Carlotta calls from behind him. He takes a second to translate the words in his head, never having gotten completely fluent in the language. She’s sitting at the dining table while Carmen stands next to her and futzes with a plate of little croissants.</p><p>The alarm bells that had been quietly echoing in his head since she told him her mother was coming over get louder at the sight.</p><p>Carmen never futzes. She doesn’t make extraneous movements and she’s decisive in the actions she takes. If something is off-center when she puts it down, that’s just where it’s going to be unless someone else moves it. But now she takes the time to nudge the plates and bowls around until they’re all aligned with each other and equally spaced across the table. </p><p>Which means she’s nervous about this too.</p><p>Gray smiles reflexively as his spine turns to ice. He obeys Carlotta’s request to join them with a practiced ease, “Estaría feliz de hacer eso.” &lt;<em>I would be happy to.</em>&gt;</p><p>He lopes over in long, casual strides and slips into the chair across from her, grinning at the older woman and drumming his fingers slightly on the table.</p><p>Carmen bends down to speak to her mother, "Mamá, este es Graham. Solíamos ir a la-” &lt;<em>Mom, this is Graham. We used to go- </em>&gt;</p><p>"Puede hablar por sí mismo, mija.”&lt;<em>He can speak for himself, dear.</em>&gt; Carmen’s mother interrupts her introduction of him, patting her daughter on the cheek, “Puedes prepararnos un té mientras hablamos?”&lt;<em>Can you make some tea while we talk?</em>&gt;</p><p>Carmen nods and turns away, taking the long way around the table so she passes him on her way to the kitchen. She meets his eyes and mouths the words ‘play nice’. </p><p>Gray doesn’t react except to smile and reach for her arm when she’s close. He can’t say anything without giving her away, but he wants to tell her he can handle it. No worries, he’s always nice. She slows down by a tiny amount, letting her hand sit heavy in his as long as possible before walking away entirely.</p><p>Carlotta watches him as he watches Carmen, her expression pleasantly inscrutable. “Graham, tomamos unos mates? Te gusta la bebida? Es un favorito aquí.” &lt;<em>Graham, will you have mate (tea)? Do you like the beverage? It is a favorite here.</em>&gt;</p><p>He’s basically familiar with yerba mate, the herbal tea is ubiquitous in Argentina and he’d seen dozens of people drinking it just on the taxi ride from the airport to Carmen’s apartment. He’s never tried it prepared traditionally, only had the bizarre, neon, canned variety that Sheena had gotten hooked on during their weird couple of months right after graduation. That stuff had tasted more like a soft drink than anything else. He doubts it’s the same flavor he saw his cab driver enjoying this morning if the musky, earthy scent in the vehicle had been any indication of the flavor. From the smell alone he’d hazard that the tea tastes like drinking a cigarette.</p><p>He could lie and say he wants it, even though his gut is telling him Carlotta is the type to know when she’s being lied to. But maybe he’s supposed to lie in this instance. Is it even lying if it’s just a part of the social script of meeting people? Would it be worse to refuse it than to be caught disliking it after accepting? Carmen said they were the good guys and, in his books at least, good guys didn’t lie just to save face. </p><p>They also didn’t take ten years to tell someone whether or not they wanted a cuppa, generally speaking. But he ignored that bit.</p><p>"Por favor, llámame Gray. Para ser honesto, ha pasado mucho tiempo desde que tomé el trago." &lt;<em>Please, call me Gray. To be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve had it.</em>&gt; He hedges, neither agreeing nor disagreeing to being served the drink and conveniently leaving out that he’s only ever had the mass-market stuff.</p><p>Carmen shoots him an incredulous look from the bar counter behind her mother so he knows immediately that he’s made a mistake, and an amateur one at that. He should have lied. Should have been more excited for the mystery beverage, or at the very least humbly grateful for the offer no matter how it ended up tasting.</p><p>‘Somewhere in the world, Countess Cleo is feeling the need to smack someone upside the head.’ He thinks, distantly. </p><p>Carlotta only smiles, though, and he feels more of his insides freeze up. “Entiendo. Carmen, si no es mucho trabajo, puedes hacer un café también? So, Gray, what is it you do? My daughter tells me you went to school together." &lt;<em>I understand. Carmen, if it isn’t too much work, can you make some coffee too?</em>&gt;</p><p>Her switch to English is as effortless for her as it is embarrassing for him. He really hadn’t been struggling all that much with the grammar, but rather with the competing desires to be the charming fraud he’s been trained to be or the honest fool that Carmen prefers.</p><p>Or maybe the switch had nothing to do with his hesitation to answer her questions and his accent really is so terrible she’d rather use a language she isn’t a native speaker of than keep listening to him. He supposes that’s decently likely as well.</p><p>He smiles a little sheepishly to show that he knows why she switched even though he really has no idea. "Yeah, we were students together and then coworkers, of a sort." Weird, amnesiac coworkers on both sides of the law at different times but he doesn’t think he should get into that now. "I studied electrical engineering while Carmen was studying…" </p><p>Shit. How was he supposed to condense Carmen's work down to a job description that a normal person would recognize? Cultural preservation? Art inspection? Health and Safety?</p><p>Carlotta picks up one of the sweet croissants and begins delicately picking it apart, speaking without looking up, "She was a skilled pickpocket with the Villains International League of Evil, I'm aware. Are there any answers you would like to change at this time?"</p><p>Gray is once again thrown for a loop. He wishes he’d spent a little less time making out with Carmen and a little more time finding out exactly what she had and hadn’t told her mother about their shared history. He fumbles slightly for the threat of the conversation, trying to make his confusion work to his advantage. "Well actually...no. I really was an electrical specialist, I even work in stage lighting now that I'm not with the uh, League of Evil.” He clears his throat slightly, very aware of how bad that sounds. “Anyway, we both studied at VILE Academy and then Carmen escaped while I stayed on before being...released."</p><p>Carmen is making subtle 'slow down' motions from where she’s boiling water for the drinks. Gray takes that to mean she hasn't told her mother about the memory-altering technology VILE had used on them. Which he thinks is understandable. He doesn’t remember anything about his mother, but he’s fairly sure if he could tell her what happened to the two of them at the hands of Dr. Bellum it would break her heart. </p><p>He doesn’t blame Carmen for not telling her mother, doesn’t blame her for not wanting to think about it any more than she absolutely has to and hates that he’s reminded her of it even in this small way. But he realizes it means she must have told her mother next to nothing about him, considering how his history is so wrapped up with the hateful machine. </p><p>Maybe that’s for the best too.</p><p>Carlotta raises an eyebrow, “Released?”</p><p>Gray picks up a dulce de leche cookie and turns it between his fingers as he speaks, choosing his words carefully. “I was...involuntarily let go...due to my...persistent...inability and unwillingness to...bring Carmen back to VILE…” </p><p>He's being cagey. Carlotta knows he's being cagey. Carmen is now making 'keep going' motions and he's trying really hard to not physically turn to her for help.</p><p>He picks up speed once he’s back in territory that’s easily glossed over. "We ran into each other a little while later back in Australia where I was working as a lighting tech at the Sydney Opera House and I asked her on a date that same day. Our schedules didn’t match at first, but I kept asking and we eventually met at a little cafe by the beach. From there I decided she was the best thing that could ever happen to me so I stuck around as much as possible with both of our jobs."</p><p>Gray figures his time as an accidental sleeper agent is probably his best bet for ingratiating himself with any normal person, seeing as he’d been reprogrammed to be docile and complacent while still remembering everything he’d been feeling at the time. It's an almost insulting oversimplification, but he hopes some flattery and name dropping will help his chances. And it’s not as though it’s really a lie, either.</p><p>Carmen’s mother looks at him with some interest for the first time in their conversation. “I went to the Sydney Opera House several times with Carmen's father, it's a beautiful theater."</p><p>"Yes, I enjoyed working there." He’d just about hated working there. The stuffy crowds, the boring shows, it was enough to drive anyone to a life of crime.</p><p>She smirks, as though she knows what he’s thinking. "Well, that's all very interesting. But I believe I asked what you do, not what your job is. What do you do for fun? What do you enjoy?"</p><p>‘She’s doing this on purpose.’ He thinks with a bolt of clarity. No one asks ‘what do you do’ and means ‘what do you like to do’. Either it’s on purpose or it’s a very strange translation error. Even he knows those questions are completely different in Spanish and wouldn’t result in this kind of confusion.</p><p>Why would she do this on purpose, though? She must have come in already set on disliking him, but was it just on principle? Or had he made some crucial error already that had told her everything she needed to know? Could the tea really have been that important? He knows he’s not exactly a prize catch but he thought he’d do a little better than this, at least.</p><p>Should he confront her about it? He doesn’t see that going well for him. And anyway, he’d promised he’d be nice. Or at the very least he’d acknowledged that the message had been received. Which wasn’t the same thing but he doubted Carmen would side with him if he suddenly accused her mother of playing a rigged game.</p><p>Gray scrambles to think of a few activities he does with relative frequency. “Maybe it’s a little cliché, but I like reading crime novels. I enjoy traveling when I have the time. I like staying up to date on new engineering research.” He speaks with confidence, as he was trained to, but he’d only listed things he’d done since getting on the plane last night. It’s starkly clear that he has no hobbies beyond his job and no interests beyond Carmen. He has nothing to offer.</p><p>“Is that it?” Carlotta looks very unimpressed. She resembles her daughter so much that the gaze cuts deep, perhaps deeper than she’d intended. How many times had he been on the receiving end of that look while Carmen had been brainwashed? When he’d tried to hold her back from decisions she wouldn’t be able to undo and only succeeded in convincing her that he was a useless ass who probably shouldn’t be on her team.</p><p>“Yup! I’m a pretty simple guy I guess!” There’s an obvious strain to his voice that would make Professor Maelstrom giddy to hear, but Gray is so desperate to escape this disastrous conversation that he doesn’t bother trying to smooth it over with an excuse.</p><p>Carlotta hates him. Of course she does. He would feel the same if someone like him came around trying to date his kid. He’d probably do worse than a polite conversation if he’s being honest.</p><p>He supposes he’ll have to leave again. As much as he hates the thought of Carmen losing yet another friend - losing him specifically for, what was it at this point, the fourth time? - he won’t get in between her and her mother. A family was the only thing she’d ever wanted and now she had it. How could he live with himself if she lost that just to mess around with him? How could he ever ask her to choose?</p><p>No. He’ll go into hiding again before he lets that happen. </p><p>Carmen will look for him though, he’s sure. She’ll track him down and demand to stay in contact even if it drives a wedge between her and her mother. He’ll need to be careful about where he goes. Maybe somewhere Nordic, he thinks, already cold just thinking about it. He knows she’s had some bad experiences up there which might make her reluctant to search thoroughly.</p><p>Was it worth it to look into faking his own death? Again? He hadn’t exactly done it on purpose last time, he’s sure he could do a better job if he really tried.</p><p>Gray looks over to where Carmen is watching them, her eyes bouncing back and forth with some concern at the extended quiet. He remembers the weight of her grief washing over him in that dirty alleyway behind the theater, decides it would be too cruel to do that to her again. He’ll have to disappear the regular way, then, and simply stay on top of changing aliases as needed.</p><p>He's so caught up in his planning that he almost misses Carlotta's next words.</p><p>"Well. Something to be said for simplicity. What are your plans now that you've arrived in Buenos Aires? Will you be staying with my daughter?"</p><p>All three of them turn at the sound of a tea kettle whistling. Carmen hurries to pull it off the stove, opening cupboards and pulling out packages of tea and coffee as the water starts to cool down.</p><p>Gray turns back to find Carlotta already watching him. He clears his throat again, stalling as he tries to remember her question. "Ah...yes, I’ll be staying here. As long as she'll have me.”</p><p>He tries for carefree but thinks he’s still falling a little short, his aim hitting closer to evasive or possibly imbecilic. At this point he’ll settle for simply telling the truth no matter how it sounds.</p><p>Carlotta doesn’t bother reacting to his words. She moves on to the next question quickly, "Do you have a job lined up?"</p><p>Gray blinks at the sudden change in topic and tempo. "Not yet, but even if none of the theaters are hiring around here, there's always a need for electricians."</p><p>"So you'll be staying local for your work?"</p><p>"That's the plan."</p><p>"You don't care that it might not be what you've specialized in? You'll take any old job?"</p><p>"Well when you put it like that-"</p><p>"I just want to get a clear idea of your intentions here. What are your plans for the future?"</p><p>"Creo que ya es suficiente, Mamá." &lt;<em>I think that’s enough, mom.</em>&gt;</p><p>Carmen sets the coffee pot and the mate gourd down on the table with a firm clack, drawing him and her mother up short. Gray feels a bit as though a spell has been broken, the cobwebs of stress and concentration falling away as he looks to her gratefully.</p><p>Carlotta, too, softens immediately and grins at her daughter. "Tienes razón, mija, mis disculpas." &lt;<em>You're right, darling, my apologies.</em>&gt;</p><p>She watches Carmen prepare the yerba mate leaves in the bulbous cup, offering a few pieces of advice for the temperature of the water and the angle of the metal straw. Gray gets up to retrieve the tray of mugs and sweeteners Carmen had prepared but left on the counter.</p><p>Once he’s seated again, Carlotta turns back to Gray and thanks him for his help with a warm voice and a radiant smile.</p><p>"Now, don’t look at me like that!” She laughs at the moon-calf expression he must have on his face, “You'll have to forgive an old woman for her fun. I knew I liked you as soon as I came in so I couldn’t resist testing you a little bit." Her eyes gleam with a familiar teasing affection, one he's seen from her daughter many times.</p><p>"Come on now, you’re not old yet." He defaults to blandly charming as he attempts to process what she said. As far as he remembers she’d merely given him the bare minimum kiss on the cheek and then breezed past him. It hadn’t felt like she’d seen him as anything more than a new houseplant, much less taken a liking to him immediately.</p><p>Carlotta leans in closer to her daughter and whispers, very audibly, “Ah, me gusta este chico, Carmen.” &lt;<em>Ah, I like this boy, Carmen.</em>&gt;</p><p>Carmen leans in as well, “Si, a mi también.” &lt;<em>Yes, me too.</em>&gt;</p><p>Gray watches them from the opposite end of the small table, feeling trapped somewhere between lauded and laughed at. “Can I ask what I did to pass your test?”</p><p>Carlotta’s lips twist to hold back another smile and she indicates to her own neck where a shirt collar would be. Gray looks down. He doesn’t immediately see anything out of the ordinary, but when he grabs the collar to pull it away for a better look, he reveals an unmistakable lipstick print in the same color that Carmen is currently wearing. It’s small, just the corner of her lips and mostly hidden below the folded fabric of the collar, but somehow that seems almost more conspicuous.</p><p>He feels heat prickle at the tips of his ears, but he’s determined to not be ashamed of his obvious endearment towards her daughter. He grins and keeps his hand there, covering it and holding it to his chest.</p><p>Carmen moves to stand behind him, leaning an arm across the back of his shoulders as she reaches down to see what they’re talking about. Her fingers tangle with his slightly, pushing them aside to reveal the red smudge against the white collar.</p><p>She makes a quiet distressed noise above him and smooths the fabric back down, letting her face fall into his hair in embarrassment. As much as he’s enjoying the physical contact he wishes he could see her face. She’s not a frequent blusher, and he’s sure her face must be adorably bright red right now.</p><p>Carlotta leans back in her seat and hides her laughter at her daughter’s mortification behind her hand. Carmen tries to tug her hand back but Gray intertwines their fingers, holding on tight. He feels her groan and begin to laugh reluctantly against his head. The arm resting against his back slips around the front of his neck and she leans more of her weight against him, trusting him to hold her steady. He thinks that’s a good sign that what she’s embarrassed about isn’t that she was caught canoodling with a criminal, but rather that she was caught at all and by her mother of all people.</p><p>Gray pats her arm consolingly.</p><p>Once the moment calms down, Carmen tilts her head back so she’s only resting her chin on his head. “That wasn’t very nice, Mamá.”</p><p>Carlotta has the grace to look a little chastened. “Ah, maybe not. But it’s my job as a mother to embarrass you and to scare any boys you bring home into behaving. You understand, don’t you Gray?”</p><p>Gray has no frame of reference whatsoever as to what’s normal for a parent to do, only knows what he’s seen in movies or read about in books. “That’s...definitely something I’ve heard.”</p><p>Carmen’s mother looks at the two of them for a bit, frowning slightly before getting up from her chair and reaching her hands out. Carmen steps back so he can get up, but doesn’t go far. Gray takes Carlotta’s hands with some confusion.</p><p>Carlotta holds them for a bit, gently bumping his thumbs together as she gathers her thoughts. “I know I’ve only just met you, Gray, but I trust my daughter to be sensible in these things. Regardless of your past, I can see already that you care deeply for her. And she cares deeply for you. This is the only thing that is important.”</p><p>She lets go of his hands to gently hold either side of his head. Her hands are soft and cool on his still-flushed skin, and when she pulls him down slightly for a kiss on the forehead her lips are whisper soft as well.</p><p>Carlotta lets him go and she pulls Carmen over from where she had been standing next to him. She plants a much firmer looking kiss to her daughter’s forehead before speaking to him again. “You are a good man, mijo. I feel safe knowing Carmen is in your care. And you in hers.”</p><p>Two sets of grey eyes bore into him, their pride weighing at him like a thick coat underwater. Gray thinks that’s a lot of faith to put in someone based on very little evidence but he keeps it to himself. Murmurs a ‘thank you’ instead, and tries his best to look happy when Carmen offers him a cup of coffee and half of an orange.</p><p>~</p><p>A few days go by without Gray really noticing. Then a week, then two. Time passes like warm syrup in the light filled apartment, viscous and golden. He looks for a job in the area but it’s not a high priority with his savings and her stipend. They get accustomed to one another in this new environment, with a new type of relationship neither have much practice being in.</p><p>They go into the city frequently, with planned destinations and without. Gray has always liked cities. He used to like them because they were full of opportunities; lots of empty apartments and offices to break into, easy prey like tourists and businessmen, and he’d savored the feeling of being the most dangerous thing anyone would run into even if they didn’t know it. Now he likes them because they make him feel small. Unseen and unimportant in the grand scheme. He could be any random person on the street with any benign history.</p><p>Once while they’re exploring, he gets distracted by some colorful architecture and loses sight of Carmen after going to check it out. He ends up in a wide and winding cobblestone street full of cafes and shops with stone walls along the sides like a riverbed. It’s beautiful, but he’s too worried about finding his way back to really take it in. A strange panic rises in his chest when he doesn’t see Carmen’s red hair in the throngs of people around him, like brackish water rising in his lungs. </p><p>His stomach churns. His throat stings. He hops up on a bench but still doesn't see her anywhere.</p><p>Gray has never been afraid of being lost, and logically he knows he’s fine. There’s no one looking for him. Anyone that would be is in jail or works for an organization that’s forgiven him, legally. And she’s fine too. Carmen is the best operative VILE ever produced. There’s no need to be worried. He knows that.</p><p>The crowds of people swarm around him like a current pulling him away from where he needs to be. He feels his heart beat faster, sweat prickling at his hairline.</p><p>Has she noticed he’s not with her anymore? She must have. But would she come looking for him? Or would she assume he got himself into this mess so it’s on him to get back out? Should he stay where he is like a child lost at Disneyland? Should he go looking for her?</p><p>‘Idiot. Fucking dickhead.’ He berates himself, pacing, ‘She should just put a kiddie leash on me at this point. What kind of secret agent gets lost anyway?’</p><p>His pocket buzzes with a text message. </p><p>It’s Carmen, asking where he went.</p><p>Gray scrubs his hand over his face, makes himself take a deep breath and calm down like he should have done from the start. He texts back a few details about the brightly colored buildings and restaurants around him. Carmen tells him to go to a particular one with mannequins leaning out from the second story balcony. She says she’ll meet him there and then show him around as apparently he’d managed to stumble into a rather famous outdoor museum. </p><p>She follows her message with a palm tree emoji and Gray stares at it for several minutes as his heart rate slows, unable to decide if her understanding of emojis is still unrefined or perhaps far surpasses his own at this point. </p><p>He sends back a snowman and hopes he got it right.</p><p>When they’re not wandering the streets looking for anything new and exciting, they go to the markets together and pick ingredients for dinners. He’d decided to learn to cook properly rather than continue ordering take-out and making do with granola bars and cereal as they’d both done all their lives. Carmen is excited at the idea, so even though he’d partially wanted to learn so he could surprise her with her favorites, he’s happy to share the limited counter space with her instead. Bumping elbows as they work side by side, reaching over and around one another for herbs and stray onions.</p><p>It’s no surprise that Carmen takes to it quickly, but it’s also quite a bit easier than he was expecting as well. His eyes and hands already attuned to detail oriented work such as as this. If he can crack a safe then he can crack an egg, he jokes. Carmen rolls her eyes with a fond smile.</p><p>He cuts his hand while chopping vegetables one day, a deep slice into the meat of his palm where it slips off the tip of the knife. Gray doesn’t move at first. Any emergency training he ever learned is eclipsed by the sudden shock of pain and all he can do is stare at the blood where it spills over his flesh, contaminating everything on his cutting board. </p><p>He hears his name being called, but it’s as though his head is filled with cotton. Why did something like this have to happen? Hadn’t he been watching? Hadn’t he been careful? Hadn’t he been trying his best and doing everything right and yet-</p><p>Carmen’s smaller hand takes hold of his wrist. She pulls him to the sink and washes the cut under cold water, presses a clean towel into his hand and closes his fingers around it firmly. She’s nearly buzzing with the need to move, to go and grab the first aid kit he assumes, but she takes a moment to hold his fist in her hands and look at him with concern. </p><p>She says his name again. </p><p>Gray tightens his hold on the towel, a silent promise that he won’t bleed out in her kitchen at least until she gets back. As soon as she flits away he feels the flood of emotions he’d been holding back, so strong he can’t even put words to them. Shame and disgust writhe in his chest and brush up against something darker, something thorny and poisonous that’s long since taken root in his heart.</p><p>He looks over the mess he’s made; the food that would be wasted, the towel that would be stained, the peaceful moment that had been lost. They’re minor problems, he knows, but what they represent is a life he thinks he was always unfit to live. Good food, a safe home, someone who wants him around? There’s some horrible relief in ruining that, he thinks, like he'd been waiting this whole time for the other shoe to drop without even realizing it.</p><p>'Now she'll know.' he thinks, as he gracelessly blots some of the blood from the edge of the cutting board with his towel, 'I can't hide it any more, now she'll see I could never be what she wanted.'</p><p>Carmen comes back quickly with a metal box, bright cherry red with a white cross on top and Gray could laugh for how cheerful it looks. She flips the lid open and pulls out gauze and a roll of bandages. Takes his arm again and carefully pulls the towel out of his hand, glancing up at him in apology when the fabric sticks to the wound.</p><p>He wants to tell her that it’s barely an ache now, that she doesn’t need to be so gentle, but all he can say is that he’s sorry.</p><p>“It’s okay.” She murmurs, as she examines the injury. She digs an alcohol swab out of the kit and tears it open with her teeth, her other hand still holding his wrist steady. The swab stings where she dabs it around the cut and she repeats her words though he doesn’t make a sound.</p><p>They don’t talk as she winds the bandage around his fingers to keep it in place, the silence between them almost a living thing. He knows she’s thinking about all the times she wasn’t able to do this before. When they were enemies, when they were apart, when they were together but she wasn’t capable of such care.</p><p>Her movements have a smoothness and a precision that only comes from practice and Gray, too, can't help but imagine her wrapping her own sprained fingers or twisted ankles. Bandaging cuts in the frigid loneliness of a safe-house even though he knows she had Shadowsan and those other two with her while she was on the run.</p><p>But she didn't have him. And that was his own stupid fault.</p><p>He looks back at the cutting boards, one covered with carefully separated piles of diced vegetables and one that looks like a prop piece for a horror show. He wonders if they’ll go back to their planned dinner after this. Thinks maybe it’ll still turn out without the ingredients he’d bled all over even if it’d be a bit different than they were expecting. But Carmen takes control of the situation easily, answering his question before he can find the words to ask.</p><p>“Why don’t we just order in today? That cafe my mother likes should still be open and we can have them send a box for her and the children as well.”</p><p>Gray smiles ruefully. “Sounds good. You know me, anything for the kiddos.”</p><p>Carmen smiles back but he can see that she’s still worried about him. Unsure of what just happened. He can’t bear to explain it so he quickly deals with the mess in the kitchen and guides her over to the couches. While she gets comfortable and calls the cafe, he picks one of her CDs at random from the bookshelf and puts it into her CD player. He fiddles with the buttons for a bit, wondering vaguely where she’d managed to find one of these old machines. It doesn’t even seem to have a USB port.</p><p>He flips through her other CDs while she finishes catching up with the cafe owner and puts in their order. There’s an obvious lean towards vintage in her music selection that he wouldn’t have guessed for her, but he supposes it fits in a way.</p><p>He hears her sigh as she hangs up the phone. “The food should be here in about half an hour. What do you want to do while we wait?”</p><p>Gray hits the play button and turns on his heel. He holds out his uninjured hand. “How about a dance?” </p><p>She joins him eagerly, steps in close and puts a hand on his shoulder. His bandaged hand sits lightly on her hip in the classic pose. She grins at him. “Do you know how to dance the bolero?”</p><p>He shoots back a crooked smile, “Nope. But I like to think I’m just brimming with potential. Teach me?”</p><p>She takes a step to the side and he follows, slowly going through the steps of a basic dance that’s similar enough to a waltz that he catches on quickly. The music still moves faster than they do, though, and he pretends to be worse than he is so she has to keep leaning in to indicate his next step. </p><p>As the song changes, he sees her glance down at his hand on her hip. He hooks his thumb through her belt loop and swings her around a little faster, speaking to pull her eyes back to his. “I didn’t think anyone still made CD players like that, haven’t seen one in over a decade probably.”</p><p>Carmen laughs a little, “It was my mother’s. So were the CDs.”</p><p>“You know? That does explain some things.”</p><p>She pulls some fancy footwork that has their positions reversed and her back leaning into his chest, his arms wrapped around her before he fully realizes what she’s done.</p><p>Carmen spins herself out of his arms, holding tight to his hand and returning to the starting position to begin again. They’re closer this time, the fronts of their bodies pressed flush against one another in a way that’s both more intimate and more intuitive for the dance. She pulls him along faster as she speaks again. “The machine is old but it still works just fine. I don’t need some new combination CD-DVD player that connects to my phone and can turn all the lights in the apartment purple. I like it just how it is.”</p><p>Gray spins her under his arm and uses their combined momentum to do a quick lift, dipping her low just in time for the end of the song. She’s laughing again, smiling bright like sunlight on the ocean. He holds her there, breathless at the sight, in spite of the pain where his cut splits open under her weight.</p><p>He was taught, once, that time heals all wounds. But he’s starting to think that there are some wounds that never heal at all. Some pain that never gets easier to bear, that you only ever get accustomed to feeling.</p><p>This simple, honest life feels like yet another thing he’s stolen. Every time Carmen leaves, Gray hopes and dreads that she might realize he’s pulled a slight of hand and replaced what she was due with this sad doppelganger who’s never been anything except a lead weight wrapped around the legs of anyone who gets near him.</p><p>What’s he ever done to deserve such peace? </p><p>He’s been hungry all his life, always wanting and never full. No matter how much money he had it was never enough. No matter how many beautiful objects he surrounded himself with, he always wanted more. As if that could ever make up for the emptiness inside. He hates that someone like Carmen has become tangled in his revolting, all-encompassing desire. </p><p>Whenever she leaves he holds his breath with fear that she’ll never come back. That she’ll come to her senses, or she’ll be hurt somehow. That he’ll fail to protect her. That she’ll realize she doesn’t need him. He wants her to never leave his side. He wants her to not get too attached to an irredeemable criminal so that when he inevitably fucks up again she won’t be too hurt. She deserves better than anything someone like him could give her.</p><p>A while after the knife incident Gray lies awake in bed, feeling Carmen breathe softly from where she’s wrapped herself around him. For someone who’s always on the move during the day, she’s surprisingly clingy at night. He supposes it’s his only saving grace that he can give her this unconscious comfort.</p><p>He loves her, he thinks. He loves her, he loves her. And he’s sure that’s the worst thing he’s ever done. At the very center of him he’s a selfish thief and he always will be. He’ll take everything she has to give and only ask for more.</p><p>“You’re thinking too loud again.” Carmen sighs against his shoulder.</p><p>Gray makes himself relax fully, and shifts slightly so he faces her. “Sorry to wake you. I’ll try to keep it down in there.”</p><p>He runs a finger up the curve of her bicep, one of his favorite lines of her body. She smiles faintly, still half asleep, and widens the hollow of her neck and shoulder so his hand can move higher.</p><p>He does so, obligingly. The pads of his fingers brushing over the collar of her shirt to the warmth of her neck. He lingers beneath her jaw, cupping the skin there that is as delicate and soft as the jacaranda flowers that grew along his street back in Perth. </p><p>He’d said he was sorry for disturbing her, but he’d meant he was sorry for hoarding her. Sorry for not being strong enough to do what was right. Sorry for demanding a place in her life even after everything that happened.</p><p>Carmen opens her eyes when his hand stops moving. She must see something of his thoughts on his face because she props herself up on one arm so she’s above him, her curtain of dark hair falling over her shoulder.</p><p>She leans down to kiss him slowly, gently.</p><p>His arms immediately wrap around her and pull her closer. He tries to push the kiss harder, faster, pressing against her with desperation. To his shame, his mouth on hers is neither loving nor passionate. Only hungry.</p><p>Carmen shifts so that she straddles him, heavy on his lower abdomen, and the rest of him shivers without the warmth of her. His hands fall from her waist and he knows his fingers probably dig into her thighs painfully, but he clutches at her regardless. Holding her down and hating himself for it.</p><p>Her nails drag along his scalp as she runs a hand through his hair. She kisses him slowly again, deliberately, forcing him to her slower pace.</p><p>Gray strains up to meet her. His hands leave her legs, running up and down her body like he can’t decide where to touch. He wants to experience every part of her but in his haste he remembers nothing and has to start over.</p><p>He wants to push her away, tell her he’s sorry he is the way he is and that she’d be better off without him. He wants to hold her tightly and never let go, beg her to keep trying to help him because the only times he feels human are when she’s touching him.</p><p>Gray wants to dig his fingers into her until he meets bone, until he has no choice but to feel her and to know her. But he can’t stand the thought of the welts and bruises his love would leave on her so he makes himself settle for trying to pull her down again, his forearm wrapped tightly around her back because he can't trust his hands not to harm.</p><p>He loves her. He didn’t know love could hurt like this.</p><p>Carmen lays her palm in the center of his chest, and presses down until he feels it. “Hold still.”</p><p>Gray stops.</p><p>His hands freeze where they sit on her ribs. He even stops kissing her, panting open mouthed against her lips.</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>He feels something like a whine creak at the back of his throat. He kisses her frantically to bury it, but her other hand tightens in his hair and holds him back.</p><p>Her voice is quiet but no less commanding. “What did I say?”</p><p>Gray exhales sharply, looking up to where her eyes glint silver in the city light from the window. Bright even in the middle of the night. He realizes she’s actually waiting for his answer when he feels her hand press harder into his chest. </p><p>“...You said to hold still.”</p><p>“That’s right. Can you do that for me?”</p><p>He thinks it might just kill him but he nods, his live-wire emotions coiling tight inside of him. She’s right, of course. She should be in control. When he’s in charge only bad things happen. He never knows if he’s doing the right thing - doesn’t have the sense for it and maybe never did - but this is something that he can do.</p><p>Carmen smiles against his lips, devastatingly tender. “Good.”</p><p>The hand on his chest moves up to his neck. Skates over his adam’s apple and up to hold the back of his head. She kisses him sweetly for a while, hums happily when he sucks her bottom lip between his which seems to be allowed but pulls at his hair again when his palms tighten around her sides. He groans, a low rumble in his chest. That one’s not allowed. </p><p>She takes her time with him, running her fingers along the shell of his ear and down his shoulder. Moves from his lips to his cheeks to his forehead. She speaks again, her breath puffing softly across his face, “You’re beautiful, you know? Especially here.”</p><p>She kisses the bridge of his nose. There’s a nearly imperceptible ridge there from where he broke it as a child. It figures she’d have not only noticed it but taken a liking to it.</p><p>“And here.”</p><p>She kisses near the corner of his eye where he knows he has a few laugh lines. He tilts his head to the side unthinkingly, pleading for more. </p><p>Carmen’s hand at the nape of his neck tightens and his heart drops into his stomach when he realizes what he’s done. He snaps his head back to where it had been, cringing at his twofold disobedience. He wants to do as she asks but it seems he just can’t help it. Same as before. Same as always. </p><p>Should he explain himself? Or would that be yet another disappointment? </p><p>Her mouth is on his before he can figure it out, swallowing his apologies. She pulls back just enough to talk and her voice isn’t as steady as it had been before. “Just a little more, okay? Hold still a little longer. You’re doing so good.”</p><p>He thinks he’s never been good a day in his life but he’ll try for her. He can be good for her.</p><p>Gray hisses through his teeth, “Right. Just a…just...”</p><p>Carmen smiles at him again and his words slip from his mind like a wedding ring down a bathroom sink. She presses more kisses to his face, her tongue peeking out to brush hot against his skin every time like a jolt of electricity and he thinks he’s going to claw his way out of his own chest just to get to her.</p><p>She murmurs to him between each kiss, “That’s it, that’s perfect. My good boy. You’re almost there. You’re being so good.” A steady burble that draws a teeth-clenching whine from somewhere deep within him at the thought of her being possessive over him. He blushes at the sound, wants to cover his mouth and hide his face but he keeps his hands on her because he wants to do as she says even more. Carmen lifts away slightly and he sees her dark eyes widen as she takes in his self-consciousness. She rushes back in to pepper kisses across his cheekbones.</p><p>“So pretty when you blush for me. You want to be my good boy, don’t you? My baby, my love. My sweetheart. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Yes. God, yes.” His voice is nothing more than a rasp, like metal on wood. He sounds like he’s been gargling with rocks but she moans into his mouth so she must not mind. </p><p>“Then hold still.” she says. As if he could forget.</p><p>Every cell and molecule in his body is attuned to her. Her touch and her words and all the little sounds she makes. He’s aching to move. He wants to bring his knees up to tilt her hips against his. He wants to pull her close and spread his hands wide across her back to keep her warm, but he trembles as he waits instead. Kisses back with as much intensity as he can every time he catches her lips. </p><p>Finally, after what feels like an eternity, she leans back. Straightens her arms on either side of him and looks down runs a heavy gaze over him. Her eyes are almost entirely black, her lips candy red and swollen. He can’t string a coherent thought together long enough to guess what he looks like but there's a tension wound so tightly inside him that he thinks he’ll fly apart at the seams if she makes any motion except back down to him.</p><p>Carmen lifts one hand to trace over his stomach and chest, up to his face to card through his hair again then back down.</p><p>He shudders.</p><p>“Okay.” Her voice is distressingly far away now, though somewhere in his mind he knows it’s less than two feet of space.</p><p>Gray blinks, and frowns slightly. “Okay?”</p><p>She nods slowly, eyes flickering to where his arms are still planted at her sides and then back to his face.</p><p>Oh. <em>Oh.</em></p><p>His hands inch downward, waiting for any cue from her. She smiles as his fingers brush her lower stomach through the thin material of her shirt, hums when they reach under her soft shorts to stroke the crease between her hips and thighs, sighs when they trail down to the back of her thighs again and skitter over the places he’d clutched before. </p><p>He hopes he didn’t leave any marks. Hates to think of her feeling any pain from that tomorrow. Hates to think of her being forcibly reminded of him when she doesn’t expressly want to be. No matter how rough he wants to be sometimes, he’s always careful to not  leave any blemishes on her skin. To not stake any kind of claim on her even when she’s generous with the love-bites she leaves on him.</p><p>To do so would be…well...</p><p>He doesn’t have a name for such a selfish indulgence.</p><p>Gray sits up slightly to trail soft kisses down her shoulder. He holds her hips and cautiously flips them over so she lays beneath him. He wants to give her what she wants, wants to be good for her. This could be good, right?</p><p>Carmen goes without resistance, her hands curling naturally where they land by her head like roses heavy in bloom.</p><p>He sits back on his knees, staring down at her for a long moment. Her hair spreads across the pillow like a fluffy halo. Her dove grey gaze holds him captive for a moment and he feels his heart jump in his chest. She seems perfectly content to be laid out before him like this, and her trust in him sits in his chest like a physical weight. A sodden lump of clay that he continually fails to make anything beautiful from.</p><p>But he’ll try again now.</p><p>He tugs her shirt up and off of her shoulders, and Carmen moves just enough for him to do it without trouble. He tosses it to the far corner of the bed. He waits again to see what she wants him to do but gets no instructions, she only watches curiously, waiting to see what he wants to do. Gray huffs out a breath of laughter, thinks he’s on his own this time, and leans down to press a kiss to the line of her sternum. </p><p>His hands rest on her ribs, fingertips nearly spanning the width of her. They trace upwards to palm her chest through her plain cotton bra. He knows she’s sensitive there and she proves him right as she arches into his touch. He rolls her beneath his thumbs, bringing her to peaks under the soft fabric before his hands slip around to hold her up slightly. He raises her just off the mattress to kiss at the soft skin below the arch of her rib cage, and her weight pulls at the muscles in his shoulders and forearms. </p><p>Reminds him that he’s here in this moment, that she has chosen to be here too.</p><p>Gray lays her back against the sheets and kisses down her stomach. His hands follow beneath her, fingers hooking the waistband of her shorts. He guides her long legs out of the garment, holds her up to nuzzle into the curve of her inner knee as he flicks it away. Unwilling to part from her any longer than necessary. </p><p>He feels the strength of her muscle as her thigh tenses slightly beneath his hand, feels the thin layer of fat that sits below her skin. She is soft in places now that he knows she was only ever hard before. No longer on the run constantly, not fighting for her life or for the treasures of the world every spare moment she has, her body has begun to fill the spaces left by VILE and ACME with the gentle swells of peace. Gray swears he will touch and kiss every one of them. </p><p>He looks back up at her, to where her arms stretch over her head to fist in the pillowcase as though it’s a concerted effort to not reach for him. The light from the city highlights the flush that blooms down her chest as well as the small, silvery scars that dapple her skin and he is captivated by how she is so sweetly graceful everywhere except her eyes, which scorch over him as she watches his every movement.</p><p>His free hand reaches up to smooth against the low hills and valleys of her stomach. He drags his teeth along the petal-soft skin of her inner thigh, another sensitive place, and she groans his name beneath him. A buzzing warmth sparks inside him at the thought that she likes what he’s doing. That what he wants is what she wants too.</p><p>He drops her leg and kisses up the ridge of her hip because he wants to. He nips at the tops of her breasts because he wants to. He runs his fingers up the tense muscle of her arm and works her fingers loose from where they cling to the pillow. He wants her hands on him again.</p><p>As soon as her hands are freed she buries them in his hair, sweeping down and across his shoulders. He moves back to her mouth again, the motion rocking against her in a way that makes them both gasp. He shifts one leg to the outside of hers for a better angle that has her fingers digging into the muscles of his back.</p><p>Carmen ducks her head into his neck, holding him still for a moment before she exhales slowly and presses her lips to his chest just above his heart. When she opens her mouth he’s expecting a bite or another kiss, but instead she speaks. “What are you thinking about when you lay awake at night?”</p><p>The question catches him off-guard and he’s stuck for a moment, trying to pull words from the fog of sensation that’s taken over his mind. “Nothing important.”</p><p>“Are you sure? You can talk to me about it.”</p><p>Gray tries to look down at her, but with her forehead pressed into him all he can do is tuck her further in as he turns his head unless he wants to dislodge her arms from around his shoulders.</p><p>He breathes in the mildly perfumed scent of her hair, recognizing the smell as the water lily conditioner he sees in the shower they share. “It’s nothing. Dumb stuff that’s not worth repeating.”</p><p>She takes a few moments to work herself up to her next words. “I just want you to know that you can talk to me about whatever, okay? If there’s something wrong we can work on it.”</p><p>He turns his hands inward, elbows pressing into the bed as his palms search for skin. And when he finds her in the shapeless darkness beneath them, she breathes deep to finish her thought in a rush. “I just...sometimes I worry that I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”</p><p>Gray stills above her, a dizzying mixture of guilt, disbelief, and gratitude sloshing inside him. He realizes how much his jittery sorrow and bitterness might have looked like regret from an outside perspective, might have looked like an unwillingness to settle down with her rather than sheer incapability. It would be the logical outcome, the confirmation to both of their deepest fears - for Carmen that she is fundamentally unloved and destined to be abandoned, for Gray that he’s fundamentally unloving and destined to be alone. </p><p>He doesn't know if he's ashamed that he's acted in a such a way to make her think he'd leave her, or honored that she thinks he has the strength of will to ever do so.</p><p>Gray breaks her hold easily, flexing his back and raising up as her hands fall to rest hot against his thighs. She looks up at him in surprise, then away, frowning. Embarrassed and sullen from the confession. A glowing blush dusts high across her cheeks.</p><p>As endearing as the sight is, he doesn’t take her confession lightly. He knows it must have been prickling at the back of her mind for days before she’d admit defeat like this. Before she’d be forced to admit that she doesn’t know what’s broken in him or how to fix it.</p><p>‘My strong girl.’ The thought rushes through him like a wildfire in the brush, blazing out of control before anything can be done to stop it.</p><p>His girl. His wonderful girl. Strong enough for both of them by far. So afraid of being afraid. He thinks it’s only fitting that if he ever forgot her then he forgot himself entirely.</p><p>She reaches for him and he bends back down to her. He begins to kiss along her jaw, up to the soft spot just under her ear and then down to the dip between her collar bones. He murmurs as he goes, “You don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to worry about anything. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”</p><p>“Promise?” her response is immediate. The words have a teasing lilt, and he can hear where her smile tugs at the vowels, but there’s an urgency to her question that makes his heart ache. </p><p>Instead of answering, he bites into the soft skin at the top of her chest. </p><p>Knows it will bruise.</p><p>~</p><p>Gray buries and unburies his feet in the warm sand, twisting the large umbrella planted next to him so that it’s shadow doesn’t fall over him. He has a book open on his lap but he hasn’t read more than a paragraph in at least an hour. Too taken with the view of Carmen and the redhead siblings laughing as they dance with the surf in search of sea shells and shark teeth. Zack is wearing a borrowed coat from Gray and it billows around his lanky frame as he jumps around. Carmen and Ivy wear long shorts under their swimsuit tops, hair whipping around their shoulders in the stiff wind.</p><p>The Argentine beach is colder than he’s used too. While the sun is hot where it hits his skin, the breeze is chilly and the water is downright frigid. Gray had volunteered to take the first towel-watch after getting his feet swamped for the first time, waving off their stares that ranged from curious to concerned with the promise that he had brought a book and really did want to read it.</p><p>Carmen’s friends had shown up that morning to visit for a day. They were still on the job but apparently they had a long layover for a late connecting flight that he suspects were chosen deliberately for them. The redheads had burst into the apartment and bypassed him entirely, running straight for Carmen like a pair of hunting dogs. Only after a lengthy group hug session did they turn on him, sizing him up where he sat on the couch.</p><p>He’s not sure what image he projected - relaxing with a cup of coffee and a tablet, clearly still wearing pajamas - but it was enough for them to lower their guard after only one sidelong look at each other, and the three of them had crowded into the living area.</p><p>Zack and Ivy had immediately fought over the armchair with the matching ottoman, Ivy nabbing the seat while Zack pretended he’d wanted to collapse over the footrest from the start. Carmen had leaned over the back of Gray’s couch, sneaking his mug out of his hand while he was distracted by the younger boy’s wild squirming as his sister kicked up her feet on top of him.</p><p>When Gray turned to take his mug back, one of the siblings slipped the throw-pillow out from behind him.</p><p>He didn’t turn back to see which one. Only shot Carmen a deeply unimpressed look. Carmen hadn’t said anything either, but he could see her laughing behind the mug as she sipped his coffee.</p><p>The three of them had discussed various places they could go before Zack and Ivy would have to leave, hardly paying any attention to him beyond using his tablet to search for the hours of the famous Cafe Tortoni in the city. It seemed to be a constant struggle between Ivy’s desire for adventure and Zack’s combination one-track mind and insatiable appetite, every argument seconds away from becoming a physical altercation. He half expected Carmen to snap and make the decision herself. </p><p>She’d never had the patience for things like this before; when Sheena and Jean-Paul would snip at each other or when Gray would obstinately insist on the truth of common myths such as drop-bears and toilets flushing counterclockwise in Australia. She’d always dig her heels in until she either found a happy medium for everyone, or he admitted to his joking. That was back as students at VILE Academy, and as VILE Faculty her word was law. But here she’d only laughed and mediated when absolutely necessary, seeming to be plenty fulfilled just having the siblings nearby once again.</p><p>Gray, too, mainly watched rather than participate. He didn’t know these people, didn’t know what they liked or hated, and didn’t want to disturb the happy balance the three of them struck together whether or not they could come to any decision. </p><p>He wondered if he would have to convince them that he really was one of the good guys now. It seemed impossible that they would just believe that if they knew everything he’d done, but so far there was no sign of suspicion or oncoming interrogation. He’d wondered how much Carmen had told them about him, and if he was allowed to be affectionate with her if they were nearby. She hadn’t sat down at all during the conversation but she’d hovered around him, her hands brushing his shoulders as she’d talked.</p><p>Ivy suggested a riverboat cruise on the delta. Zack suggested another steakhouse. Carmen suggested the city’s historical district.</p><p>The siblings argued again, and Carmen had only smiled and run her knuckles over the ridges of his spine just above his tee shirt collar. Gentle, private, and encouraging.</p><p>Gray suggested one of the beaches just outside the city, noting with a nod to Zack that there were supposed to be stands and trucks selling food along the road above it. And surprisingly, everyone had agreed. Even Carlotta, whom Carmen had called soon after, had said she could come with them for a little while at least.</p><p>'Speaking of…' he thinks to himself as Carlotta returns from the strip of food stalls at the top of the sand dunes, ruffling his hair as she passes.</p><p>“Oi!” Gray ducks and reaches up to push it back from where it falls into his eyes. Carmen’s mother turns to grin impishly at him. She has a cup of fresh fruit in her hand that she picks through for the pineapple spears, though he knows she’d gone to get the cup for her daughter. Gray notes with a snort of laughter that she seems to be the only one who knew what to expect from the beach trip, dressing in loose pants and a fashionably cut yet warm coat.</p><p>When she reaches the trio still playing at the edge of the water, Gray can see how far Zack’s eyes bug out at the sight of the food and nearly face-plants in his haste to run up the beach to get fruit for himself. </p><p>Ivy runs after him, “Get back here you moron! We both know you don’t have any money!”</p><p>Carlotta pushes the cup into Carmen’s hands and jogs to catch up, “Why don’t I take care of this one, Ivy? You two still don’t speak very good Spanish and you might order something weird. Zack! Slow down! You’re going to fall!”</p><p>Gray is watching them stumble up the soft sand of the beach when he feels his book lift from his lap. Carmen folds herself down to sit between his legs, leaning into him to press her nearly bare back against his chest. </p><p>She pulls the umbrella over so that they’re in the shade and he’s immediately cold. He tucks his limbs around her, complaining, “You’re a menace, you know that? It’s bloody freezing out here and then you come over doing this on purpose.”</p><p>She smirks at him over her shoulder. “Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?”</p><p>Gray hunches around her, pressing his chilled fingertips to her sun-warm sides and noses at the crook of her neck, “Hmm, I dunno. But I’m pretty sure I remember seeing a bite mark here this morning. Curious that it’s disappeared already, maybe I should leave another one.”</p><p>Carmen slaps a hand over his mouth just as he bares his teeth, “Don’t you dare! I spent almost ten minutes covering that up and waterproofing it for this trip.”</p><p>He laughs, muffled behind her palm, and tastes the sea water on her skin as he speaks. “Something tells me your mother wouldn’t be all that surprised if she saw it.”</p><p>Carmen lets go of his face, brushing her fingertips lightly across his cheek for the few grains of sand that had transferred over. She eats a chunk of mango from the fruit cup and looks past him to the other three members of their group at the food stands. “Well. I didn’t do it for her sake.”</p><p>Gray grimaces, imagining having to explain any spots or bruises to the redhead siblings. Anticipating the earful he’d get about not hurting their friend even if she asked for it. Even if she did that and more to him in return and he was grateful for the tangible proof of her affection when old fears crept into his head.</p><p>He can hear Carmen holding back a laugh as she watches his feelings move across his face, and he leans in to steal a sweet and sticky kiss as well as an orange slice from the cup in her hand.</p><p>She shifts in his lap, turning around so she’s sideways and he raises his knee to give her a backrest. Carmen leans in a little closer, maybe for another kiss, but Gray can hear the distinctly Boston sounds of the siblings returning and he starts to move away so they’re not so intimately intertwined when her friends return.</p><p>Carmen pouts at him as much as her pride allows and grabs his hand where it sits near his hip in wordless protest.</p><p>Gray rolls his eyes with exaggerated exasperation, but he lets a relieved smile play at the edges of his mouth. Glad that he doesn’t have to keep his hands to himself even if she doesn’t want to be overtly romantic around her friends. He pulls his hand out from under hers, hooking his elbow around her neck to keep her close and quickly pressing his lips to the side of her head.</p><p>When Zack, Ivy, and Carlotta return, Gray suspects they bring the fruit stall’s entire supply with them and Carlotta looks slightly worse for wear from the experience. She and Ivy have a regular cup each, like the one she’d brought Carmen, while Zack holds two extra large ones smothered in sweet cream.</p><p>“Reckon you’ve got enough fruit there, mate?” Gray asks as the other boy plops down on the towel next to theirs.</p><p>Zack looks up sharply from where he’s digging one of the cups into the sand so it doesn’t fall over. “What? Why? Do you think there’s another stall nearby? Would they have different stuff?”</p><p>Ivy laughs and jostles his shoulder, “Why don’t you eat the ten pounds you already have before you go looking for anything else.”</p><p>She turns to look at Gray, suddenly accusatory, pointing at him with her plastic fork. “And you! Don’t encourage him!”</p><p>Gray raises his hands in surrender, but doesn’t lift his arm from Carmen’s shoulder.</p><p>He steals another orange from her cup.</p><p>Carlotta watches with a frown. “Gray, I should have asked earlier, are you hungry? Did you want one as well?”</p><p>“Nah,” He winks at Carmen before looking back to her mother, “it’s more fun this way.”</p><p>Carmen grins, wild and sharp as she did when he first met her. She steals a grape from Carlotta’s cup and the older woman swats lazily after her, muttering about the morals of society these days. Carmen snickers as she eats the fruit, utterly unrepentant.</p><p>An argument breaks out as Zack tries to pick something from Ivy’s cup, his sister pushing him away with a sandy foot.</p><p>“C’mon Ives! I wanna try the little berry things!”</p><p>“Then you should have got a normal one yourself instead of two of the same deluxe ones!”</p><p>“But these ones have whipped cream on them!”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah. How about this? I’ll trade you for one of your purple things.”</p><p>Zack looks deeply conflicted, but agrees. He fishes out the smallest cube of fruit he can find and offers it to Ivy with a proud smile. </p><p>Ivy scowls at him, but begrudgingly stabs a yellow fruit that looks like a cherry tomato and the two drop their offerings into each other’s cup. Ivy eats the purple fruit without much thought, seeming to enjoy it enough. Zack pulls several confused faces as he chews the golden berry.</p><p>Carlotta laughs, “What do you think of it, Zack? We call it aguaymanto here, but it is also called the cape gooseberry.”</p><p>Zack swallows, still looking confused. “It tastes like a tomato with extra sugar?”</p><p>“Yes, it is also sometimes called tomatillo, or little tomato. Ivy, what you had was prickly pear, or chaco tuna.”</p><p>Zack immediately looks horrified. “TUNA?!”</p><p>Ivy scoffs loudly. “Bro! It’s obviously fruit!”</p><p>Carmen digs around in her cup for an aguaymanto, holding it up between her thumb and forefinger like it’s a gem she’s appraising. “There’s another fruit called tomatillo though, right? A bigger green one. Does that get confusing?”</p><p>Carlotta begins explaining the origins and uses for the two fruits and Carmen settles in, listening with rapt attention. Gray lets himself space out. He looks at her, sitting in the circle of his limbs, enjoying a day with her friends and family. She looks like there’s nowhere she’d rather be.</p><p>For six months under the watchful eye of VILE he’d stood by her side and longed for something like this, some happiness he’d never known and couldn’t name. He’d waited day by agonizing day for her to come back to herself, to look at him with the joie de vivre he remembered and not the cruelty he had unlearned in meeting her. He would have kissed her on the spot if he had seen it even once.</p><p>But every day she stepped farther from the girl he knew, risking more, wanting more. The black hole within her grew and he recognized it as the same one inside himself. He knew the feeling of needing to prove to the world that you’re more than just a nobody with nothing. You didn’t need love if you had power, if you had money or influence, and you would tell yourself that until you were backed into a corner. With anyone who could have helped you having long since been pushed away.</p><p>Gray never wanted Carmen to feel that echoing emptiness inside, to stand at the edge of her soul and see the greed for what it really was. Simple loneliness, a longing to matter, and a shameful, primal urge to hurt those who had hurt you. He didn’t want her to feel the same anger that had been boiling under his skin his whole life until he met her. Didn’t want her to know the jagged and icy hatred at the whole world, at herself, when she saw the arbitrary lines between those who Had and those who Had Not.</p><p>Carmen was better than that, better than all of them. It took him 6 months longer than it should have but he’d finally realized that if he wanted her back, he would have to retrieve her himself. She was simply too good at her job. There would be no one coming for her.</p><p>He still wonders sometimes what he would have done if her friends had been able to track her down. If they had found a way to bring her back but rightfully didn’t trust him, would he have let her go? He wants to say yes, remembering the fervent desire to get her away from that life she would have hated. But he can’t know for sure, also remembering the soaring happiness of working side by side with her as he'd dreamed of for years.</p><p>Gray drops his head onto Carmen’s shoulder and she brushes her hand through his hair absently, still listening to her mother talk about regional agriculture.</p><p>This was what he’d wanted all his life. But now that he had it, he definitely didn’t deserve it.</p><p>If everything was fair and just in the world, if everyone truly got what they deserved, Carmen would be a living saint and he would be taken out back and put down like a rabid dog. He’d willingly contributed to the theft of irreplaceable cultural artifacts, had stolen millions to fund an organization that went out of its way to hurt people. He’d hurt people himself, he’d killed people. He’d even tried to kill Carmen once, though he couldn't bring himself to put any effort into it. The idea had been as sickening then as it is now, but that feeling hadn’t stopped him from turning his crackle rod up to lethal in the train car. All in the name of a syndicate that couldn’t care less for him. </p><p>He deserved to be punished for that.</p><p>But Carmen wanted him by her side, safe and happy. Didn’t that count for something? Didn’t she deserve to get everything she wanted? After everything she’d done and been through? </p><p>Did her goodness outweigh his evil? Karmically? Cosmically? Or were ‘deserving’ and ‘wanting’ truly such different paths that they could never be reconciled? After all, wasn’t that the point of all of this? Wasn’t that the lesson he was supposed to learn? That he’d wanted and reached and fought his whole life but he only came close to deserving once he’d let go. Once he’d agreed to be locked away forever if it meant Carmen would be whole again.</p><p>Gray lifts his head from her shoulder and falls backwards with a huff, feeling the warm sand shift under him as he goes. The sun shines bright on his head and chest where they escape the shade and he feels Carmen move to face him ever so slightly, making sure he's okay.</p><p>Maybe it doesn’t matter, he thinks. Maybe it all cancels out and people are left just being people. Making mistakes and trying their best. Maybe that's all it ever was and he should stop thinking so much about it.</p><p>Just as he's beginning to doze off, a cool shadow blackens the orange tint of his closed eyes. He frowns, and cracks one eye open.</p><p>Zack's big blue eyes stare back at him from a scant few inches away. </p><p>The other boy is much too close for comfort, but Gray was expecting a power play like this at some point so he doesn't startle or try to move away. </p><p>He didn't think it would be Zack to make the first move. He would have put all his money on Ivy if asked but he can work with this. He could strike at Zack's big ears to shock him and slip away while he gets his bearings. Or he could go for the neck and shoulders, using Zack's unbalanced stance to flip him and get a more favorable fighting position. If nothing else he could just throw sand in his eyes, though he'd probably get some in his own while doing so.</p><p>Gray dismisses these ideas quickly. It's not worth the effort to prove that he's top dog here. He knows he could take Zack, and he's fairly confident he could beat Ivy too, both of them untrained and in disadvantageous terrain here. But he doesn't want to fight Carmen, who would undoubtedly step in. Not only because he would lose, but also because he would hate to see her upset or angry with him.</p><p>He'll stay where he is then, no squirming or shirking, even though the prolonged staring contest is causing an itch between his shoulder blades. Whatever rung of the hierarchy the redhead boy is on, he'll have to learn to share.</p><p>He's about to not-so-politely ask if there's something the younger boy needs when Zack opens his mouth. "Can you clear something up for me? Player said it the other day but I don't think I believe him."</p><p>Gray opens both eyes just to narrow them in confusion. "...alright?"</p><p>"Is it true that in Australia you guys call speedos 'budgie smugglers?'"</p><p>Gray suddenly doubts everything he’s ever learned about social interactions. He looks down his chest to where Carmen sits, prim and pretty in the cradle of his legs. She's rubbing sunscreen on her arms and not paying attention to this confrontation at all.</p><p>That's a good sign, right? That this is weird as hell but not intended to be alarming?</p><p>He looks back to Zack. "Well, yeah. For obvious reasons, I think."</p><p>He gestures with his head to another group of beach-goers at their towel spot, a few of the men wearing only the tight fitting swimwear despite the weather.</p><p>Zack turns his head to look without moving away and nods with understanding, one hand coming up to tap thoughtfully at his chin.</p><p>Ivy's head comes into view through his peripherals, as though she's leaning in to see him but can't get very close with her brother in the way. </p><p>"So what do you guys call an annoying person?" She asks, with a pointed look at Zack that her sibling misses entirely.</p><p>Gray takes a moment to think through a few insults, looking for one fit for polite company. "Probably a drongo, I reckon. It means more ‘idiot’ than ‘annoying’ but it'll do."</p><p>Ivy whacks her brother across the arm, "Hahaha! You drongo!"</p><p>The word sounds entirely foreign in her thick accent. Zack sits back to rub at that spot and Gray quickly pulls himself up, nearly smacking his nose into Carmen who gives him an amused look.</p><p>Zack turns away from his sister in a half-hearted attempt at a cold shoulder. He looks back to Gray, "Back home we would call someone a scootch if they were really bothering us. It's nearly Italian."</p><p>He says it with a proud tilt to his head, as though a word being almost another language was something very impressive.</p><p>"Scootch, huh?" Gray twists to face the siblings, "Well how about this, what do you call something if you don't know the name of it?"</p><p>Zack tilts his head to the side, "I guess a wadjamacallit."</p><p>"It's obviously a thingo."</p><p>Zack grins with a competitive look in his eyes. "Oh yeah? What do you call something that’s really good?"</p><p>"That’s a ripper."</p><p>"Wrong again! It's mint!"</p><p>"Going to the liquor store?"</p><p>"Go to the packie for a rack."</p><p>"No way! You grab a goon from the bottle-o."</p><p>Zack crosses his arms and throws a wrench in their game. "Gimme a frappe from the spa and reverse the cow."</p><p>Gray is certain that means absolutely nothing, so he tries to go all-in on the odd phrases he heard growing up regardless of their intended context. "Hard yakka out woop woop, I'm flat out like a lizard drinking."</p><p>"Gonna be wicked pissah down at the cape!"</p><p>"That sheila's got a few 'roos loose in the top paddock."</p><p>"Lynn Lynn the city of sin, never come out the way you went in!" </p><p>Zack sings this last one, and from the corner of his eye Gray sees Carmen and Ivy exchange the flat, unimpressed look that girls often use when boys are being stupid.</p><p>He tries one more, keeping his eyes on the other boy but his attention on the girls. "He's cross as a frog in a sock, left his bathers at the billabong."</p><p>Zack continues, recklessly oblivious. "Had to bang a U-ie on Comm Ave because some massho-!"</p><p>Gray is expecting it when Carmen and Ivy simultaneously reach to slap a chunk of fruit into his and Zack's mouths. He catches Carmen’s wrist and takes the papaya chunk delicately with his teeth, darting the very tip of his tongue out to lick the juice from her fingers. She rolls her eyes but he swears he sees a hint of red at the tips of her ears.</p><p>Zack doesn’t fare quite so well. He chokes and falls backwards into the sand, a pineapple spear sticking out of his mouth like a yellow cigar. The four of them watch him for a couple seconds until the pineapple starts moving where he’s clearly munching away at the bottom of it.</p><p>Carlotta laughs and reaches over to pull Ivy closer to her, rubbing her hands along the girl’s shoulders. "You should be nicer to your brother, Ivy. He's just trying to have fun." </p><p>Ivy scowls and flushes, looking like she wants to duck her head but is enjoying the attention too much. "If he wants me to be nicer he should be less stupid!"</p><p>Carlotta sighs, still laughing, and begins to braid Ivy’s copper hair across the top of her head like a crown. "All boys are stupid, mija. You can't hold that against him."</p><p>Gray has a hard time coming up with a defense even for just himself, but briefly contemplates making the argument anyway when he feels Carmen's fingertips stroke under his chin to draw him close to her again. She catches his lips in another lingering, fruit flavored kiss and Gray finds that he really doesn't care at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR LOVELY COMMENTS ON THE LAST CHAPTER!! I'M SORRY I DIDN'T RESPOND TO ALL OF THEM BUT I READ THEM CONSTANTLY THEY ARE LIKE 1-UPS TO MY LIFE FORCE</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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